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SERMON, 



EEY. J. W. WELLMAN, 

PASTOE OF THE ELIOT CHTJECH, NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS. 



WITH AN APPENDIX. 



Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, 
and ye shall tind rest to your souls." — Jer. 6 : 16. 



BOSTON: 

CONGREGATIONAL BOARD OE PUBLICATION. 



CHAUN 




G-OV^L 



i^'^. 






C A 31 B R I D G E : 
ALLEK AiSfD FARNHA3I, PRINTERS. 









The following Discourse was preaclied on the 21st of De- 
cember, 1856, to the author's own congregation, and, at their 
request, was subsequently published. At the solicitation of the 
Congregational Board of Publication, it is now comnaitted to 
their hands. The sermon has been revised, and the notes 
which have been annexed will, it is hoped, add somewhat to 
its value. They will, at least, serve to show how numerous 
and vital are the relations of the subject discussed, and how 
inadequate any treatment of it must be that is confined to the 

limits of a single discourse. 

J. w. ^y. 

Newton, Mass., Dec. 14, 1857. 



SERMON. 



Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him 
his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast 
gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee 
one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word 
may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it imto 
the church ; but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee 
as a heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, whatsoever 
ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and w^hatsoever ye 
shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. — Matthew 18 : 15-18. 

Ox the twenty-first of December, 1620, two hun- 
dred and thirty-six years ago, our Pilgrim Fathers 
landed at Plymouth. The sun was lingering, as 
he is to-day, about his winter solstice, when they 
stepped shivering upon the cold and bleak shore. 
Before them was the illimitable wilderness, full of 
real and fabulous perils ; behind them the vast, un- 
charted ocean, from whose dangers they had just 
escaped ; and all around, nature, in her midwinter 



b THE CHUECH POLITY 

garb, stern and dreary, was frowning upon their ap- 
proach. But the very feet of those men hallowed 
the rock which they pressed as they stepped upon 
the shore, and left it immortal ; and to-day it con- 
centrates the veneration and grateful affections of a 
large and prominent portion of the human race. 
That rock now is, and ever will be, one of the most 
conspicuous objects on the broad bosom of the 
world's history. 

That little band of Pilgrims was a fragment of a 
Congregational church. They had left their pastor 
and a part of their brethren in Holland, but expected 
them soon to follow and rejoin them in their exile. 
They came hither for freedom, — not freedom to do 
every thing, but to worship God. They came hither 
to escape ecclesiastical despotism. In breaking away 
from the formalities and corruptions of the English 
ecclesiastical establishment, they had gone to the 
New Testament to learn the primitive mode of or- 
ganizing and conducting a Christian church. Under 
that guidance, their church polity had assumed the 
form of Congregationalism. And it was this exter- 
nal and democratic aspect of their religion, more 
than all things else, that drew down upon them the 
wrath of the English hierarchy. Had they been con- 
tented to remain quietly in the Established Church, 
and conform outwardly to all its forms, it would 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 7 

have made little difference what they believed.* But 
it was just this that they could not do. They had 
conscientiously adopted another, and, as they be- 
lieved, the only primitive and scriptural form of 
Christian worship and church polity ; and it was to 
set up this divine form of a church in the world, and 
to enjoy it unmolested, that they came to this cold 
and inhospitable shore. It was for freedom to con- 
duct theu worship, and all their ecclesiastical 
affairs, according to what they believed to be the 
teachings of the New Testament, — it was for their 
Congregationalism as the most completely divine 
system of church government, that they braved the 
perils of the deep, and the greater perils of the wil- 
derness. 

Since the year 1769, it has been customary at 
Plymouth, and at various other places in New Eng- 

* " The martyrs of tlie primitive cliurcTies of old lost more of 
tlieir blood and lives for their meetings and assemblies than for 
personal profession of the faith ; and so also have others done 
under the Roman apostasy. It is a usual plea among those who 
engage in the persecution or punishment of such as differ from 
them, that if they please they may keep their opinions, their con- 
sciences, and faith unto themselves, without meetings for com- 
munion or public worship ; and herein they suppose they deal 
friendly and gently with them. And this is our present case." — 
Inquiry concerning Evangelical Churches, by John Owen, p. 256, 
recent edition. 



8 THE CHURCH POLITY 

land and beyond New England, to celebrate the 
landing of the Pilgrims, on the day of its anniver- 
sary, with appropriate ceremonies. But this year it 
is proposed to inaugurate a new and far more gen- 
eral commemoration of that grand event, namely, a 
commemoration by all the Congregational churches 
of our country. This Sabbath is Forefathers' day; 
and it is proposed that all the chm'ches of our de- 
nomination in the land shall have their attention 
especially directed to the incomparable worth of the 
church polity of the Pilgrim Fathers. The design is 
to increase the already greatly revived interest of 
our churches in Congregationalism as the church 
polity, not only of the Pilgrims, but also of the Apos- 
tles and primitive Christians, and particularly to con- 
firm the justness of its claims to the warm Christian 
love, and the ample Christian benevolence, of all its 
adherents. And this is only one of many indica- 
tions, patent to all, at the present time, that Congre- 
gationalism is now asserting itself in our country, 
particularly in the Western States, as never before. 
This present movement, therefore, we hail as an 
omen of great good to living evangelical religion, 
and to the best interests of our country. It will 
serve permanently to connect Congregationalism in 
the minds of men with the exalted character and 
faith of the Pilgrims. It will greatly extend this 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 9 

primitive church order in this land, and will give it a 
position and a power such as it has never yet en-, 
joyed. A noble monument this to the memory of 
that little band of Congregational Pilgrims ! — more 
noble than any ponderous column, though it were 
of costliest marble, and though it towered to the 
heavens I For the monument we propose is not ma- 
terial and perishable ; it is not the bricks and stones 
of the temples that may be reared; it is not the 
robes and the ritual and the sensuous ceremonies 
of an imposing church establishment; it is not a 
long and rising grade of church judicatories, as un- 
wieldy and discordant in their working as they are 
human in their origin and authority ; but it is the 
truths — the towering, radiant truth of the gospel^ — 
which shall thus be made to light up the hills and 
valleys, the forests and prairies, of a continent ; it is 
the living Christian churches, modelled after the 
simple, primitive form which shall thus be planted 
among the foundations of a rising empire, working 
their spirit ineradicably into its historic life, moulding 
all its popular institutions, and so determining its 
destiny. It is a monument that will stand long after 
the bricks and marble of our earthly temples shall 
have crumbled to dust; long after all gorgeous rituals 
and imposing church judicatories shall have passed 
into eternal oblivion ; yea, as long as that living 



10 THE CHURCH POLITY 

church shall stand, which, thus enlarged, shall wor- 
ship God in the simplicity and purity of heaven's 
worship, and in a temple not made with hands. 

I cannot conceive of any manner of commemorat- 
ing the landing of the Pilgrims more congenial with 
their spirit and aims. It is certainly in harmony 
with the godly zeal of that noble man and pastor, 
John Robinson, who himself labored most assidu- 
ously, first, to indoctrinate all his people in the prin- 
ciples of the primitive church polity, and then to 
establish them in the practice and love of it; and 
with so much success, too, that one of our early his- 
torical writers, speaking of the manner in which the 
church at Plymouth conducted their worship and 
ecclesiastical business before they settled a pastor, 
says, " The Plymouth people well understood their 
own principles ; . . . . knew the way of their worship, 
and were resolved upon it." Would that all their 
pious descendants who have embraced their system 
of church government had known as much, and had 
been as fully resolved to abide by their principles! 
Then would the church polity of the Pilgrims have 
inherited the land. This manner of observing this 
anniversary certainly accords likewise with the spirit 
of Brewster and Bradford, and the other leading men 
of the Plymouth Church, who did so much by mild 
yet enlightening counsels, that could not be resisted. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 11 

to induce the first churches in Boston, Salem, and 
Charlestown to adopt the same church polity with 
themselves, and who thus actually secured the gen- 
eral and permanent prevalence of Congregationalism 
in New England. Nothing can be more truly in 
sympathy with the spirit and aims of those Pilgrim 
Fathers, than that we to-day put our own hearts and 
hands vigorously to the work of exalting and per- 
petuating in our country that same religious faith 
and order for which they toiled and suffered in the 
Old World, for which they were exiles in midwinter 
on a frozen and rocky shore, and which, with such 
promptness and efficiency, they labored to establish 
in the subsequent settlements. 

Moreover, whenever the attention of our churches 
is called to the claims of Congregationalism upon 
their Christian benevolence, the question to be met 
at the very outset is, What is there in this church 
polity of the Pilgrims worth preserving and diffusing 
in the world ? Would not their creed be just as 
good if we left out of it their doctrine of the church ? 
Why not accept their faith in every particular ex- 
cept this ? Why not give our money to build Pres- 
byterian or Episcopalian or Methodist churches as 
soon as Congregational ? Why not be satisfied with 
a church if it can only be called evangelical ? Why 
not sustain the various missionary operations and 



12 THE CHUECH POLITY 

church-extension enterprises of these several denom- 
inations as readily as those of our own ? Would 
not this exhibit a more Christian, or at least a more 
unsectarian, spirit ? Is it, indeed, the Christian duty 
of anybody to disseminate and perpetuate Congre- 
gationalism ? What is there, in other words, pecul- 
iarly excellent in our church polity, which gives it a 
claim, superior to that of any other, to our affection 
and our benevolence ? These questions should be 
met. The members of our churches should " knovj 
their oivn principles,^^ that they may judge for them- 
selves whether they are worth maintaining. It is a 
common complaint among those who have gone 
from our churches to our Western States, that, while 
they were in New England, they never heard a sin- 
gle sermon upon their own form of chm'ch govern- 
ment.* Consequently, they are entuely unprepared 
to confront the intense sectarianism which they find 
so much more vigorously nurtured in other denom- 
inations. They do not know enough about their own 
church polity to understand that one of its gi-eatest 
excellences is, that it is singularly unsectarian, and 
that, for this very reason, they should maintain it. 
They are not aware luhy they have not heard about 
it. One of its greatest merits has blinded them to 
its value. As soon as they leave New England they 

* See Appendix, Xote A. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 13 

are met at once with the bold declaration, that 
" Congregationalism is a very good system of church 
government for New England ; it works well there • 
but it is a very bad system everyw^here else, and it 
will not do even to try it." And having never been 
taught that there is any thing of particular value in 
it, they are not prepared to gainsay such an unad- 
vised statement ; and so have quietly fallen in, as if 
it were a matter of necessity, with some other church, 
organization. And thus it has happened, that, while 
Congregational New England has done more than 
all the rest of the country to give the gospel and its 
institutions to the West, her own church order, until 
very recently, has made less progress there than that 
of almost every other evangelical denomination. 
Now the question is, is this right? Is there, or is 
there not, any thing worth conserving in the church 
order of the Pilgrims ? If there is, upon whom does 
the duty devolve ? Bear with me, then, to-day, while 
I defend, as well as I may, the faith of the PilgrimSy 
so far as it respects the doctrine of the church. 

The church polity of the Pilgrims, or Congrega- 
tionalism, may be commended to om- acceptance by 
a twofold argument: first, by its accordance with 
the teachings of Scripture ; and, secondly, by its pre- 
eminent fitness to all the ends of a church. 

I. In the first place, Congregationalism is scrip- 
2 



14 THE CHURCH POLITY 

tural. It was the church polity of the primitive 
Christians : Christ is its author. He and the inspired 
apostles taught it, and taught no other church sys- 
tem, either by word or practice. Congregationalism, 
as a system of church government, may be summa- 
rily defined under three heads : first, the nature of 
the church ; secondly, the officers of the church ; and, 
thirdly, the relation of the churches to each other; 
and each of these parts, and therefore the whole of 
the system, may be shown to be scriptural. 

1. In the first place, a Christian church, as defined 
by Christ and the apostles, was a Congregational 
church. The term Congi'egational was, of course, 
not then in use ; nor would it be now, had it not be- 
come necessary to distinguish, by some appropriate 
term, the primitive form of a Christian church from 
other forms which have since been invented. What 
we assert is, that a churchy according to the teach- 
ings of Christ and the apostles, is no other than what 
we now denominate a Congregational church. The 
term church is used in the New Testament chiefly 
in two senses. 

It sometimes means the invisible church ; that is, 
all the real followers of Christ, the whole body of 
true believers. This is the great redeemed company; 
" the body [of Christ,] the fulness of him that filleth 
all in all ; " his " bride ; " the church which he loved 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 15 

and gave himself for, •• that he might sanctify and 
cleanse it with the washing of water by the word : 
that he might present it to himself a glorious chm-ch, 
not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing ; but 
that it should be holy and without blemish." In 
this comprehensive sense of the term, we seem to be 
warranted in using it to designate either the whole 
company of the redeemed on earth and in heaven, 
or the whole company of ti'ue Christians on earth. 
Hence it is very common to make a subdivision, and 
speak of the church militant and the church trium- 
phant. But it is all, in reality, one body. This is 
the church, and is known only to Him who knoweth 
the hearts of all men. No human vision can span its 
breadth and take in its limits. The invisible line ol 
its boundary on earth, running through every Chris- 
tian community and nearly every Christian family, 
and everywhere separating the redeemed of the Lord 
from the world, no human eye can trace ; and there- 
fore it is called the invisible church. 

The second use of the term church, in the New 
Testament, is when it is used to designate visible, 
local, organized bodies of professed Christians; as, 
"the church which was at Jerusalem,'' '-the church 
at Antioch," " the churches of Galatia.'' This is the 
only visible church ; unless by a generalization, not 
according to the practice of the New Testament 



16 THE CHUECH POLITY 

writers, but to which, nevertheless, there may be no 
great objection, we call all the true churches of 
'Christ in the world the visible church. Nothing is 
^plainer than that the term is never used in the New 
Testament to designate an organized body of local 
churches. It never means a collection of churches, 
any more than the word man in the New Testament 
ever means a collection of men, or the word tree a 
collection of trees. The New Testament writers 
were not guilty of the absurdity of calling several 
churches a church. They never so confounded ideas 
and abused language as to put together several of 
the churches, and still call the resultant body the 
chm'ch. They knew of only the invisible chm-ch, 
and distinct, local, visible churches. They had noth- 
ing to correspond to such organizations as the Pres- 
byterian church, the Episcopalian church, the Metho- 
dist Episcopal church, the Roman Catholic church, 
and other centralized systems of ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment. When they spoke of a church, they spoke 
of a distinct, independent, local organization. When 
they spoke of more than one, they said churches. 
" The churches of Asia salute you ; " not the church 
of Asia. " So ordain I in all the churches ; " not in 
all the church. " The care of all the churches ; " not 
of all the church. When, therefore, we say the Con- 
gregational Churchy meaning the whole body of 



OP THE PILGRIMSo 17 

Congregational churches, we adopt a mode of ex- 
pression not warranted in Scripture. For the same 
reason, the very name, " The Presbyterian Church of 
the United States of America," shows at once that 
there is something about that organization that is 
unscriptural. So of the name of the Episcopalian 
Church, and of every other organized provincial or 
national church. We are simply in search after the 
truths with respect to the scriptm-al form of ecclesi- 
astical government ; and we deny that Christ and the 
apostles left to Christians any other form of a church 
than that of distinct, independent, local chm'ches. 
If they did, doubtless it can be shown. 

What, then, is a Christian church, according to the 
teachings of the New Testament ? It is a company 
of persons, who are apparently Christians, organized 
by a covenant igith each other and with God, into a 
society distinct and complete in itself, acknoivledging 
Christ as their only head, and who are thus associated 
for the purpose of 7naintaining 7nutual, brotherly watch 
and care, and of meeting statedly in one place to main- 
tain public worship and Christian ordinances. This 
is the definition of a church as it is described by 
the writers of the New Testament. It is also the 
same definition, in substance, which has always been 
given by the most approved authorities of a Congre- 
2* 



18 THE CHURCH POLITY 

gational church. A company of such persons thus 
organized for such a purpose, wherever it is, and 
^whatever its name, is a true church of Christ. Ob- 
serve the particulars of this definition. The mem- 
bers of a church must be apparently true Christians. 
We do not know that every member of a visible 
church is what he professes to be ; but he must be of 
such an apparent character, that, in the judgment of 
charity, we can believe him to be a true Christian, 
one who receives by faith an infinite and atoning 
Saviour, and follows him as his supreme Master. 
In this particular, a visible church differs from the 
invisible, all the members of the latter being true be- 
lievers in Christ. This company of true Christians 
must also be organized by a mutual covenant into 
a distinct and independent society, complete in itself, 
and acknowledging Christ as its only head. The 
only way in which such a voluntary society can be 
formed is by means of a mutual covenant, not neces- 
sarily formally written out, but at least acknowledged 
by the members. It must be so organized also as to 
be distinct and complete in itself, for we are giving 
the definition of a churchy not of a part of a church. 
Consequently, there can be over it no judicatories, 
no king, priest, or bishop, to whom belongs either 
the whole or any part of the church authority ; 
otherwise, without these, we should have only a 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 19 

fragment, and not the whole, of a church.^ This 
definition likewise requires that the members of the 
church shall be so situated that they can conven- 
iently meet statedly in one place. A church is a 
local organization, having for its object mutual and 
personal watch and care, and the regular congregat- 
ing of its members for worship, and Christian ob- 
servances. Such an organized collection of believers 
is a complete church. It needs nothing more in its 
structure to enable it to secure all its designed ends. 

^ " These [local] churches, as they are churches, are meet and 
able to attain the ends of churches. To say they are churches, 
and yet have not in themselves power to attain the ends of 
churches, is to speak contradictions, or to grant and deny the 
same thing in the same breath ; for a church is nothing but such 
a society as hath power, ability, and fitness to attain those ends 
for which Christ hath ordained churches ; that which hath so is 
a church, and that which hath not so is none. Men may, if they 
please, deny them to be churches, but then I know not where 

they will find any that are so It is utterly foreign to the 

Scripture, and a monster unto antiquity that there should be 
churches with a part, half, more or less, of church power, and not 
the whole, neither in right nor exercise ; or that there should be 
church officers, elders, presbyteries, or bishops, that should have 
a partiary power, half or a third part, or less, of that which 
entirely belongeth unto the office they hold. Let one testimony 
be given out of the Scripture, or that antiquity which we appeal 
unto, unto this purpose, and we shall cease our plea." — John 
Owen's Works, Vol. 15, p. 314, recent Edinburgh edition. 



20 THE CHUKCH POLITY 

It is competent to transact all ecclesiastical business. 
It has authority to choose and place over itself its 
own officers, to discipline its own members, and to 
do all things necessary to secure the great ends of a 
church, subject only in these particulars to Christ, its 
head. 

That this was the form of a church which Christ 
taught, is evident from his law of church discipline 
as laid down in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew. 
The Saviour in this passage incidentally gives a 
very clear description of a church. It is a repre- 
sentation of a church in complete and working or- 
der. According to this account of it, a church is, 
first, an o?'ganized society, organized by a mutual 
obligation on the part of its members, of brotherly 
watch and care. Therefore, secondly, it is a local 
society, a society of easy access and address : " Go tell 
the church." Thirdly, among all the members, as 
members, there is perfect equality ; no one has more 
authority than another; they are all bretlwen, and 
Christ is their only head and lawgiver. Fourthly, the 
government of tlie church is in the hands of the 
brotherhood. After two private trials of an erring 
brother, if he is not gained, " tell it to the church ; " 
that is, to the organized society of which each 
brother is a member, to the whole brotherhood ; let 
them adjudicate upon the case. " Tell it to the 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 21 

church " cannot mean, tell it to the priest, bishop, or 
pope ; it cannot mean, tell it to a session, or a pres- 
bytery, or any judiciary above the church. It means 
what it says : " Tell it to the c/mrc/i," the company 
of brethren with whom you are associated. No 
unprejudiced reader would think of any other mean- 
ing. This is the only common sense interpretation. 
Fifthly, the Saviour here teaches, with great empha- 
sis, that the authority of the brotherhood is supreme 
and final. His language upon this point is the lan- 
guage of command : "i/^ he neglect to hear the 
churchy LET him he unto thee as a heathen man and 
a publican.''^ This prohibits an appeal from the decis- 
ion of the local church to any other earthly tribunal. 
It is a cominand to terminate the case there. He 
is to be a heathen man and a publican by the decis- 
ion of the church, whsiteYer other authority may come 
in and claim to rejudge the case. And if a local 
church, after rendering its verdict, shall recognize any 
higher judicial authority than its own, whether it 
be that of an officer or a judicatory, a bishop or a 
presbytery, it violates this command of Christ. It 
refuses to terminate the trial at the point where 
he commands it to be terminated. It says to the 
Saviour, we will not let him be a heathen man and 
a publican if he neglects to hear us. Moreover, 
the Saviour, to prevent all mistake, particularly re- 



22 THE CHURCH POLITY 

minds the brethren of this local organization, that 
there is no church tribunal above their own save 
that of heaven. " Verily, I say unto you, whatsoever 
ye [you company of brethren], shall bind on earth 
shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever ye shall 
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Noth- 
ing, I apprehend, can be plaiuer than that the Sav- 
iour here teaches that the government of the church 
lies exclusively with the members, acting as a dem- 
ocratic body. If so, we have no right to say that 
the government of the church is not exclusively with 
the members, but is entirely or in part in the hands, 
either of certain officers or of certain judicatories 
above them. If the Saviour says that the authority 
of the members of a local church in an ecclesiastical 
matter is supreme and final, we have no right to 
say that it is not supreme and final. If the Saviour 
teaches that the local church is complete in itself, for 
all the purposes of a church, we have no right to 
say that it is not, and then go on to institute offices 
of a higher authority, or a cumbrous system of higher 
judicatories, to make it complete. There is great 
presumption in such a course. To say nothing of 
the commands of Christ, it is challenging his wisdom. 
For the Saviour does teach that a church is a local 
organization; that it is complete in itself; that the 
government of the church is in the hands of the 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 23 

mass of the members, acting as a purely democratic 
body ; and that their authority in church government 
is supreme. And nowhere does he give the least 
intimation of any other kind or form of a visibly 
organized church. 

The apostles, likewise, sanctioned and taught this 
form of a church, and no other. The radical princi- 
ples of Congregationalism, and also its general 
spirit, are finely illustrated in the first instance of 
ecclesiastical action after the ascension of the Sav- 
iour. An apostle was to be chosen in the place 
of Judas ; and we should of course expect that if 
the apostles were endowed with any superior eccle- 
siastical authority it would certainly now be made 
manifest. When could such authority be exercised, 
if not in filling a vacancy in their owm number? 
But they expressly disclaim for themselves any such 
ecclesiastical supremacy, by submitting this most 
important election to the arbitration of a popular 
assembly of the disciples. There were " about one 
hundred and twenty " present at the meeting. Peter 
presided, distinctly announced the business, and 
called upon them to make an election. The meet- 
ing nominated two, Justus and Matthias. And, 
after prayer for divine guidance, " they," that is, the 
whole assembly of the disciples, acting as a purely 
democratic body, " gave forth their lots," or, as 



24 THE CHUKCH POLITY 

Mosheim says this expression means, cast their 
votes, " and the lot," or the vote, " fell upon Matthi- 
as." There can be no doubt about the character 
of this ecclesiastical action ; it was strictly popular, 
or democratic. The whole company of the dis- 
ciples were called upon to make the election. 
" Without doubt," says Neander, " those expositors 
adopt the right view who suppose that not merely 
the apostles, but all the believers, were at that time 
assembled." ^ Now the argument is this : If even 
the apostles assumed no ecclesiastical supremacy 
over the mass of the brethren, what man, or body 
of men, is there, who can rightfully assume such 
supremacy ? And if the apostles did not of them- 
selves even fill a vacancy in their own number, but 
submitted the election to the vote of the assembled 
body of believers, what ecclesiastical business can 
there possibly be which may not be properly and 
rightfully done by such a popular assembly of the 
disciples ? This certainly indicates that it is a most 
daring assumption for any man,- or for any body of 
men, to pretend to exercise a higher ecclesiastical 
authority than that of the mass of the disciples 
acting as a democratic body, and it also plainly 
indicates that there is no necessity for any such 

^ Planting and Training of tlie C]iurcli,p. 19, note. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 25 

higher ecclesiastical authority. Thus in the very 
dawn of Christianity, and in the very first attempt 
made under the direction of the apostles to give it 
any visible organization, we find germinating those 
radical principles of Congregationalism, namely, the 
perfect equality of all the members of the Christian 
brotherhood as members, and the absolute suprem- 
acy, under Christ, of the authority of that brother- 
hood as an ecclesiastical body. 

The next instance of ecclesiastical action under 
the direction of the apostles, of which we have any 
record, was the choice of seven deacons. It may 
possibly be objected to the argument just presented, 
that the election of an apostle was an extraordinary 
event, and that, therefore, it furnishes no precedent 
for ordinary ecclesiastical business. But we reply, 
first, that the fact that the business of electing an 
apostle was so extraordinary makes the argument all 
the stronger for Congregationalism, showing that by 
no possibility can there ever be any ecclesiastical 
business which may not be transacted by the breth- 
ren of a local church. And, secondly, we reply that 
the very next ecclesiastical action of the disciples 
was not extraordinary, and yet was conducted in 
precisely the same manner. The election was madcj 
as before, by the whole body of believers. " The, 

multitude of the disciples" were called together by 
3 



26 THE CHURCH POLITY 

the apostles. The business was distinctly laid be- 
fore them, and they were requested to choose from 
among themselves seven men for the new ofEce. 
"And the saying pleased the whole multitude ; and 
they chose Stephen " and six others, and set them 
before the apostles, not to complete or to ratify the 
election, but simply that the apostles, as the servants 
of the church, might induct them into their office. 
Without question this was a strictly popular election ; 
the apostles thus again teaching that the power of 
appointing men to office in the church was not in 
their hands, nor in the hands of any man, or body of 
men, above the church, but exclusively in the hands 
of the brotherhood of the disciples. " It were well," 
says John Owen, in commenting upon the manner 
of this election, " if some would consider how the 
apostles at that time treated that multitude of the 
people, which is so much now despised and utterly 
excluded from all concern in church affairs but 
what consists in servile subjection It is mar- 
vellous to me, that any who would be thought to 
succeed them in any part of their trust and office 
should dare to depart from the example set before 
them by the Holy Ghost in them, preferring their 
own ways and inventions above it. I shall ever 
judge that there is more safety in a strict adherence 
unto this apostolical practice and example, than in 



OF THE PILGEIMS. 27 

a compliance with all the canons of councils or 
churches afterward." ^ 

Again, even in the presence of the apostles, the 
elders or ministers of the churches were chosen either 
by the vote, or with the sanction, of the brotherhood. 
We read in the fourteenth chapter of the Acts : "And 
when they [the apostles] had ordained them elders 
in every church," etc. The manner of the appoint- 
ment of these elders is to be determined by the 
meaning of the original word, rendered in this pas- 
sage " ordained." This word never means to or- 
dain, in the modern signification of the term ; it 
never means to set apart, or to consecrate, by the 
imposition of hands. It means, primarily, to ap- 
point, or to elect, by an uplifting of the hands, or by 
a popular vote ; and, then, it means simply to choose, 
to appoint. The apostles, then, chose or appointed 
elders in every church. And this may mean, either 
that they presided at the meeting and made the 
election by receiving the suffrages of the brethren 
and announcing the result, or that they alone made 
the election. And even if we adopt the latter mean- 
ing, there is no probability that the election was 
made without the sanction of the brethren. An 
apostle even was chosen by popular vote. The 
seven deacons were elected in the same manner ; 

^ Owen's Works, Vol. XVI. pp. 59, 60. 



28 THE CHTUCH POLITY 

and these facts of themselves render it altogether im- 
probable that ministers would be placed over the 
churches without even the approval of the brethren. 
The same word, rendered in this passage to ordain, 
is used, in the eighth chapter of Second Corinthians, 
to express the fact of a popular election of a delegate. 
This delegate was — not ordained — but '•^ chosen of 
the churchesP And such would have been the ren- 
dering of the word in the fourteenth of Acts, but 
for the Episcopal correction, substituting ordain 
for choose. The translations, previous to that of 
King James's bishops, affirm that the appointment 
was made " by election^ The meaning, therefore, 
obviously is, that the elders were appointed either 
by a popular election or by the expressed sanction 
of the people ; and either of these methods implies 
the sovereignty of the local church.^ 

Again, the apostles taught the independency of 
the local church, and the supremacy of its authority 
under Christ, by the manner in which they directed 
that the discipline of the chnrch should be adminis- 
tered. The case of the incestuous person, of whom 
Paul wrote in the fifth chapter of his first epistle to 
the Corinthians, is a notable example: "When ye 
are gathered together P the apostle says to the Corin- 
thian church, this wicked member is to be delivered 

•^ See Appendix, note B. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 29 

over to Satan. It was to be done by the whole 
body of the church. Paul censures them for not 
having done this before, which he could not do un- 
less the authority to administer discipline, even in 
its severest form, was fully in their hands. " Do not 

?/e," he says, "judge them that are within? 

Therefore put away from among yourselves that 
wicked person." The apostle afterwards speaks of 
this excommunication as having been an act of the 
church. The punishment, he says, " was inflicted of 
many ; " that is, by the majority^ showing that the 
sentence was passed by a popular vote. According 
to Paul, then, the power of administering discipline 
is in the hands of the brethren of the local church, 
and in the exercise of it they are to act as a strictly 
independent and democratic body. And we have 
no reason to believe that the views of Paul upon 
this point were peculiar. All the rest of the apos- 
tles, undoubtedly, adopted and taught the same mode 
of procedure. 

Thus the apostles, by the manner in which they 
filled a vacancy in their own number ; by the man- 
ner in which, under their direction, the election of 
deacons and pastors was made ; and also by the way 
in which they ordered the discipline of the church to 
be conducted, teach the same form of a church as 
that which is so clearly indicated in the Saviour's 
3* 



30 THE CHURCH POLITY 

rule of discipline. It was the practice, even of the 
apostles, to assume no ecclesiastical authority over 
the chui'ches, no veto power over their action; but 
always to demean themselves as their servants. 
They consulted with them, counselled and persuaded 
them, as if the supreme authority, or the whole re- 
sponsibility of final action, was with them. They 
thus plainly declare, that the sovereign power is 
vested in the brethren of the local chm'ch ; that these 
brethren are not only to have part in all church ac- 
tion, but also are amply competent for the perform- 
ance of every kind of ecclesiastical business ; that 
with them are even " the keys of the kingdom,'' the 
sole, and therefore supreme authority under Christ, 
to open and to shut, to bind and to loose. 

The following facts likewise, in this connection, 
have an irresistible force. The apostles addressed 
their epistles to particular local churches, as if these 
were the only kind of which they had any knowl- 
edge. They enjoined duties upon no other ecclesi- 
astical organization. jNIuch of theii- writings con- 
sist of directions respecting the care and manage- 
ment of local churches ; but nowhere do they give 
one du'ection in respect to the care or management 
of an organized collection of them. They gave 
directions for the appointment of no church officers 
except those of distinct, independent churches. They 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 31 

invariably denominated a bishop's charge a church ; 
never churches. There is not the least intimation 
that they ever thought of such a thing as a modern 
diocese. Even in John's vision of the chm'ch tri- 
umphant no bishops appear, but only elders or 
presbyters. Such a thing as a diocesan bishop, 
either in heaven or on earth, seems never to have 
entered the minds of the apostles. Neither did they 
give any instructions respecting any ecclesiastical 
ti'ibunal higher than that of a local church. The 
inspired founders of Christianity had no knowledge 
of any thing corresponding to modern presbyteries, 
synods, and general assemblies. All these state- 
ments commend themselves at once as true to every 
mind familiar with the New Testament. And these, 
and many other similar facts that might be men- 
tioned, establish the truth, that the apostles, as well 
as Christ, sanctioned and taught that form of a 
church which we now denominate Congregational, 
and that they sanctioned and taught no other. 

2. In the second place, the officers of a church, 
such as were authorized by the writers of the New 
Testament, were the officers of a Congregational 
church, and were of two orders only — ministers and 
deacons. It is true, that, in the origin of Christianity, 
there was a distinct class of men in the churches ; 
that is, the apostles. But these did not constitute a 



32 THE CHURCH POLITY 

distinct order of church officers. Obviously they 
were appointed to their extraordinary station for the 
specific purpose of being witnesses to the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, and of aiding, by their inspiration and 
other miraculous powers, the introduction of Chris- 
tianity into the world.^ That purpose having been 

^ " They [the apostles]," says Neander, " stand as the medium 
of communication between Christ and the whole Christian church, 
to transmit his word and his spirit through all ages. In this re- 
spect the church must ever continue to acknowledge her depend- 
ence upon them, and to own their rightful authority. Their 
authority and power can be delegated to none other. But the 
service which the apostles themselves sought to confer was to 
transmit to men the word and the spirit of the Lord, and hj this 
means to estabUsh independent Christian communities. These 
communities, when once established, they refused to hold in a 
state of slavish dependence upon themselves. Their object was, 
in the spirit of the Lord, to make the churches free and indepen- 
dent of their guidance. To the churches their language was : 
' Ye beloved, ye are made free ; be ye the servants of no man.' 
The churches were taught to govern themselves. All the mem- 
bers were made to cooperate together as organs of one spirit. 
.... Thus they, whose prerogative it was to rule among the 
brethren, demeaned themselves as the servants of Christ and his 
church." — Primitive Churchy by Dr. L. Coleman, Introduction, 
pp. 18, 19. 

With regard to the arguments that are used to prove that 
Timothy and Titus and the angels of the seven churches in Asia 
were church officers of the same rank as the apostles, or at least 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 33 

fully accomplished, the class, of course, ceased. 
Thus we now have authority for only two orders of 
officers. 

belonged to an order far above that of presbyters or ministers, 
we deem them too obviously specious to require any formal refu- 
tation. Half of the " charges " now given to Congregational 
ministers at the time of their ordination, two centuries hence will 
prove as conclusively that half of the ministers of our denomina- 
tion in 1857 belonged to an order of officers higher than that of 
the other ministers, as the instructions of Paul to Timothy and 
Titus now prove that they belonged to an order of officers higher 
in authority than that of presbyters. If they were evangelists, 
that gave them no more church autliority than belongs to the office 
of elder or minister. The apostles gave ecclesiastical authority to 
no church officers, but expressly affirmed that they were to be 
considered as servants of the church. They taught that the sov- 
ereignty was exclusively in the hands of the brotherhood of the 
local church. The Episcopalians themselves, generally, have 
now abandoned the claims of episcopacy, on the ground that 
there was a distinction in the primitive church between bishop 
and presbyter, but defend their claims on the ground that there 
was a grade of officers, not designated in the Scriptures, com- 
posed of the apostles and Timothy and Titus and the angels of 
the seven churches, from which the modern bishop can trace his 
descent. The whole fabric of episcopacy is thus made to rest 
upon the supposition of a grade of officers that has no name in 
the New Testament, and that is not even described. " Yet the 
modern bishop," says Dr. Coleman, " with astonishing credulity, 
traces back his spiritual lineage, we had almost said, through a 
thousand generations, in strange uncertainty all the while to 



34 THE CHURCH POLITY 

First, we have ministers, or pastors. Those who 
held this office in the time of the apostles were 

whom lie sliall at last attach himself, or with whom claim kindred. 
If Peter fails him, he flies to Paul, to James, to Timothy, to 
Titus, to the angel of the church, to — he knows not whom. He 
is, however, a legitimate descendant and successor of some apos- 
tolical bishop ; he is sure of that. But that bishop — nobody 
knows who he is, or what precisely his office may have been." 
With regard to all attempts to demonstrate such a thing as an 
apostolical succession in an unbroken line of bishops down to the 
present time, we agree with the remark of Rev. Albert Barnes, 
that " nothing that assumes to be a grave matter is more ridicu- 
lous or contemptible than the attempt, with a grave face, to ex- 
hibit such a demonstration." No man on earth can prove such a 
succession. Neander affirms that, " beyond a doubt, presbyters 
were accustomed to ordain in the ages immediately succeeding 
the apostles." Another scholar, not an " irreverent dissenter," 
but a " devoted son " of the Episcopal church and " a distinguished 
layman " of England, asserts that " Episcopacy, in the modern 
acceptation of the term, did not exist in the time of the apostles ; 
and that, however expedient and desirable such an institution 
might be, it cannot plead the sanction of apostolic appointment 
or example. It may be difficult to fix the period exactly when 
the episcopate was first recognized as a distinct order in the 
church, and when the consecration of bishops, as such, came to 
be in general use ; clearly not, I think, when St. Jerome wrote, 
[Jerome died a. d. 426.] " Thus much at least is certain, namely, 
that the government of each church, including the ordination of 
ministers, was at first in the hands of the presbytery." This 
Episcopalian author, with Neander and other learned historians, 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 35 

called elders, bishops, overseers, presbyters, teachers, 
guides ; all these terms being used to designate one 
office; just as we now use the terms minister and 
pastor to designate, not two distinct orders in office, 
but the same order. It will be seen at once, that it 
is of primary importance, in establishing the divine 
authority of our system of church government, to 
prove that all these terms are names applied to per- 
sons holding, not so many different offices, but one 
and the same office. But, if we begin to make any 
distinction, it will be very difficult for any one to 
show why we should not make as many distinct 
offices as there are distinct terms. If we make a 
distinction between elders and ministers, why not 

believes that a presbytery in the primitive churclies was simply a 
board, composed of the officers of a single local church. After 
showing that the first bishop must have received his ordination 
from presbyters, and therefore " could of necessity receive no 
more than it was in their power to bestow," he proceeds as 
follows : "At whatever period, therefore, it [Episcopacy] was 
adopted, and with whatever uniformity it might be continued, 
and whatever of value or even authority it might hence ac- 
quire, still, as an apostolical institution, it has none. There is a 
gap which never can be filled ; or, rather, the link by which 
the whole must be suspended is wanting, and can never be sup- 
plied. There can be no apostolical succession of that which had 
no apostolical existence." — Bowdlefs Letters^ as cited by Dr. 
Coleman in his Primitive Church, pp. 196, 197. 



36 THE CHURCH POLITY 

between ministers and bishops ? Or, if we make a 
distinction between bishops and ministers, why not 
between ministers and elders ? Accordingly we find, 
that, in one of our denominations, an elder is merely 
a layman, who is a member of a Church Session ; 
while in other denominations an elder is a minister 
or presbyter ; while in other denominations still, the 
office of minister, or presbyter, is distinct from that of 
bishop, the latter being invested with a superior au- 
thority. 

Now the simple historical fact is, it was the prac- 
tice of the primitive Christians to have, if they 
pleased, several ministers, elders, presbyters, bishops, 
or whatever they were called, to each church. They 
might have one or more ; there was no limit given 
to the number by the apostles. According to this 
custom, many of the first churches of New England, 
though small and feeble, supported two able minis- 
ters. Many Congregational churches now have 
more than one. One Congregational church in New 
England, at the present time, has five. In the time 
of the primitive Christians, these several ministers 
of a church would form a board of ministers, elders, 
presbyters, or bishops, differing from each other, not 
in official rank or authority, but only in personal at- 
tainments and character, one having perhaps pecul- 
iar gifts for ruling, another for teaching, another for 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 37 

exhortation ; and so this board, or presbytery^ as they 
were then called, would naturally divide the labor of 
their common ofhce between them, according to 
their several gifts, that each might exercise his own. 
Hence they would have ruling elders, and teaching 
elders, and exhorting elders ; all these having the 
same rank in office, or the same authority ; all being 
alike elders^ or, in other words, differing from each 
other, not in the offices which they held, but only as 
they divided among themselves the work of one and 
the same office. Nowhere is there the least intima- 
tion given that any one elder had any preeminence 
over another. Indeed, it is absurd to suppose that a 
ruling' elder would be inferior in authority to a 
teaching elder. The qualifications of all elders, and 
the manner of their call and ordination, were the 
same. Consequently, every person, officially desig- 
nated by this term, filled the highest office in the 
chm-ch under Christ. And so we find that the elders 
are spoken of, in the New Testament, as if they 
were the ministers or pastors of the churches. The 
apostles more usually called the ministers of a 
church its elders. They appointed " elders in every 
church," and the duties enjoined upon these were the 
duties of ministers. If these elders were not the 
ministers of those churches, those churches had no 

ministers. An elder was also a bishop. The quali- 
4 



38 THE CHURCH POLITY 

fications of both are declared to be the same. No 
duty was enjoined upon a bishop that was not en- 
joined upon an elder. We are distinctly informed 
that it was usual to have several bishops over one 
church, as in Philippians 1:1; Acts 20 : 28 ; but 
nowhere in the New Testament is there any inti- 
mation that one bishop was placed over several 
churches. The bishops spoken of in Philippians 1 : 1 
had only deacons associated with them, conse- 
quently they were the elders of that church. The 
elders of the church at Ephesus are called overseers, 
that is, bishops.^ In Titus 1 : 5-7 we are again 
informed that elders are bishops, the terms being 
used interchangeably to designate the same office. 
In 1 Timothy iii. the offices of bishops and deacons 
are spoken of as if they were the only offices in a 
church. In 1 Peter 5 : 2, 8, the apostle, as an elder, 
exhorts the elders to feed the flock of God, ^^ taking' 
the oversight thereof,''^ or as the word in the original 
means, acting as bishops. A bishop, then, is an 
elder, and only an elder, and an elder is a minister ; 
and a board of elders or ministers, officiating in a 
single local church, is a board of bishops.* There is 
no authority in the New Testament for making any 
distinction between a board of elders and a board 

^ Acts 20: 17 and 28. The word here translated overseers 
is the same word which is elsewhere translated bishops. 



OF THE PILGEIMS. 39 

of presbyters, or between a board of presbyters and 
a board of bishops ; nor for making any distinction 
between a board of elders and a board of elders and 
presbyters. All such distinctions are of human ori- 
gin. Nor is there any authority in the New Testa- 
ment for judicial and legislative bodies, made up of 
presbyters, and delegates falsely called elders, from 
several churches. If there is, why has it not been 
shown ? "Where is the page in the New Testament 
that gives any authority for a modern Church Ses- 
sion ; composed of the ministers of the church, and 
certain of the brethren chosen to officiate for life and 
called elders ; and transacting all the business of the 
church except that of their own election, and also 
that which is transacted by higher judicatories? 
Where is the scriptural authority for a modern Pres- 
bytery, composed of ministers and delegates from 
several Church Sessions, and exercising a judicial au- 
thority superior to that of the local church ? The 
only Presbytery, known to the apostles and primitive 
Christians, was that composed of the presbyters or 
pastors of a single church. And so where is the 
scriptural warrant for the Synod and the General 
Assembly ? Would any candid reader of the New 
Testament ever receive the remotest hint of such a 
ponderous system of connected judicatories, all the 
repositories of a judicial, legislative, and executive 
power higher than that of the local church ? 



40 THE CHURCH POLITY 

The second order of officers in the church is that 
of deacons. This is a distinct office, having its own 
distinct duties, and is the only other office of divine 
appointment in the church. It is the duty of the 
•deacons to attend to the collection of the alms of 
the church, and to the distribution of them to the 
poor, and in other things so to assist the elders or 
ministers that they shall not be obliged to "leave 
the word of God, and serve tables." 

Now it should be particularly noticed, that both 
ministers and deacons are officers of single, local 
churches. There is no provision of officers made for 
any other kind of a church. Nothing whatever is 
said about the construction, or the official appoint- 
ments, or the tribunals, or the management of a 
church, made up of a collection of churches ; and, 
therefore, every such ecclesiastical organization is 
merely human. Moreover, both of these classes of 
officers which we have mentioned gTcw out of the 
local church. They were appointed to their office by 
the members. Thus the officers were not placed over 
the church, but were chosen hy the church. They 
had not the government or the authority of the 
church in their hands. They were simply the ser- 
vants of the church, for the Lord's sake. They had 
no right to regard themselves as " lords over God's 
heritage," and were expressly forbidden to claim any 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 41 

such church authority.^ Thus the offices in the 
church were of such a nature as to be in perfect 
conformity with the judicial and legislative suprem- 
acy of the brotherhood. 

3. In the third place, the relation of the primitive 
churches to each other was that of distinct, com- 
plete churches, united only by a common faith, and 
by mutual Christian love and fellowship ; and this 
is the mutual relation of Congregational churches. 
The first Christian churches were independent. No 
one of them was under the control or authority of 
all, or any, of the rest; nor was any one of them 
under the control or authority of any officer or judi- 
catory placed over a part, or all, of the churches. 
They all stood upon the same level, each a distinct, 
complete, independent church, and had no control 
over each other, except through the persuasive influ- 
ences of Christian character and love. They were 
not independent, in the sense that they paid no 
regard to each other. They were united by the 
strongest of all ties. Christian love, and were ever 
ready to perform, voluntarily, all those acts of mu- 
tual kindness and sympathy which would naturally 
be prompted by such love. It is on this account 
that the word Congregational is more appropriate 

1 1 Peter 5 : 3. 
4* 



42 THE CHURCH POLITY 

than the word Independent.) as descriptive of the 
primitive form of church government. There is 
nothing in the nature of this divine form of a 
church to prevent one church asking advice or 
assistance of another. On the contrary, there is 
every thing in the nature of the union of the 
churches to encourage this. Hence the propriety of 
ecclesiastical councils composed of messengers, sent 
by the several churches whose advice or assistance 
has been asked. But these councils can have no 
permanent organization ; neither can they have any 
ecclesiastical authority over a church. They cannot 
ordain a minister, nor dismiss one; they cannot ex- 
communicate a brother, nor restore one already 
excommunicated; they cannot perform any ecclesi- 
astical business for the church which has called 
them, unless requested or permitted to do it by the 
members of that church. They can simply consult, 
advise, assist. They have no judicial or legislative 
authority whatever.^ One church may also ask for 
the advice or the opinion of the whole brotherhood 
of another church in settling some difficult point in 
doctrine or discipline. We have an account of such 
a conference as this between two churches, in the 
fifteenth chapter of Acts ; the brethren of the church 
at Antioch sending a disputed question by chosen 

^ See Appendix, note C. 



OP THE PILGRIMS. 43 

messengers to the apostles and elders and church at 
Jerusalem ; and " the apostles and elders, with the 
whole church " at Jerusalem, sending back their judg- 
ment in the case. There was nothing in this that 
had the remotest resemblance to a permanent and 
superior judicatory over the churches. It was sim- 
ply a conference of two churches, and it never met 
but once. No such voluntary and friendly inter- 
course between the churches can interfere, in the 
least degree, with their individual completeness and 
independence. Neither is there any thing in the 
nature of this scriptural form of a church to prevent 
the ministers of several churches uniting, if they 
please, to form an association for mutual improve- 
ment, and for consultation respecting the interests of 
the churches, but not to exercise over them any gov- 
ernmental authority. There is nothing, either, in 
this primitive constitution of the church, to prevent 
the members of several churches uniting their 
prayers and labors in carrying forward some enter- 
prise of Christian benevolence. They may even 
form a society to accomplish such an object, but not 
to exercise any authority over the local churches. 
No organization that takes any thing away from the 
completeness of a local church, or in any degree 
forms a complement to it, or to its authority, has 
any warrant in Scripture. Where, in the New Tes- 



44 THE CHURCH POLITY 

tament, is there any authority for any church judica- 
tory higher than that of the brethren of a local 
church, whether you call that judicatory a conven- 
tion, a presbytery, a synod, or assembly ? No such 
thing was known in the time of the apostles. There 
was no such connection of the churches, no such 
subordination of them to superior tribunals. There 
were no such material ligaments binding them all 
together, and, at the sacrifice of their individual 
completeness and independence, building up a great 
centralized system of church government. There is 
not the least intimation in the Bible of any such 
general government extending its supervision and 
control over all or any of the churches. And these 
facts, we affirm, are decisive of the question before 
us. The primitive churches were distinct, complete, 
independent, local, or, as we now denominate them, 
Congregational churches.^ 

^ Looking upon the primitive cliurclies as thus all independent, 
eack complete in itself, what relation would a centralized church, 
springing up among them, kave sustained to all the rest ? If, for 
instance, the churches of Asia, or those of Judea, immediately 
after tke death of the apostles, had banded together and adopted 
anotker form of churck government, and organized tkemselves 
into a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, or an Episcopal churck, 
•wkat would have been their position among tke ckurckes of 
Ckristendom ? Most certainly it would have been sectarian and 
schismatic. And why is not any subsequent rise of a centralized 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 45 

Indeed, so far as any argument from the Bible for 
a system of church government is concerned, there 
is no tenable stopping-place between Congregation- 
alism and Popery. If one degree of authority 
should be exercised over a local church, then it is 
easy to prove that two degrees should be ; and if 
two degrees should be exercised, then should three ; 
and if three, then four ; and so on to absolute des- 
potism. And it makes no difference whether this 
superior authority to that of a local church is embod- 
ied in an officer or in a judicatory. If there should 
be a diocesan officer over the bishops or ministers of 
local churches, then there should be a national 
officer over the diocesan, and, finally, a pope over all 
the ^vorld. And so, if there should be a permanent 
church judicatory invested with superior authority 
over the members, then, for the same reason, there 
should be another judicatory over that. That is, if 
there should be a session over the church, there 
should be a presbytery over the session, and then a 
synod over the presbytery, and then an assembly 

church equally sectarian and schismatic ? Why is not every 
consolidated church, of whatever kind, organizing itself, as every 
such church does, on a new and more or less unscriptural plan, 
and fencing itself off from all other churches, a schism in the 
body of Christ ? And why is not Popery the greatest schism in 
the history of Christianity ? 



46 THE CHURCH POLITY 

over the synod ; and no one can give any reason 
whatever from the Bible, why the line of judica- 
tories should stop with the assembly. By the same 
reasoning, if a church should be governed by an 
oligarchy of elders, it should be governed by the 
monarchy of a pope. Nowhere along the line 
between Congregationalism and Absolutism is 
there any one position that can be taken and de- 
fended from the Bible any better than any other. 
There is no logical stopping-place between the local 
church and Rome ; hence the drift from the less 
centralized systems of church government is always 
towards ecclesiastical despotism.^ Even the mildest 

^ " Associationism," says Dr. Emmons, " leads to Consocia- 
tionism; Consociatlonism leads to Presbyterianism ; Presbrteri- 
anism leads to Episcopacy ; Episcopacy leads to Roman Cathol- 
icism ; and Roman Catholicism is an ultimate fact." — Emmons's 
Works, Vol. I. Memoirs, p. 135. 

" There are but two steps," says John "Wise, " from an aris- 
tocracy to a monarchy, and from thence but one to a tj-ranny ; 
an able and standing force, and an ill nature, ipso facto^ turn an 
absolute monarch into a tyrant; this is obvious among the 
Roman Caesars, and through the world. And all these direful 
transmutations are easier in church afiairs (from the different 
qualities of the things) than in civil states." — Vindication of 
N. E. Churches, p. 41. 

" Far distant be the day when the Consociations of Con- 
necticut shall appear in the mother country among our Congre- 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 47 

of these systems can form no permanent union of 
any kind with Congregationalism. A breach will 
soon begin, and inevitably continue to widen, as, by 
an inherent and uncontrollable tendency, they recoil 
from the contact. There must forever be a palpable 
and fixed line of demarcation between the people's 
governing and being governed. Inside of this line 
is the primitive, scriptural church ; but outside all 
is adrift. If the brethren of a local church govern^ 
they stand fast in the position of the primitive 
churches ; but the moment they suffer themselves 
in any degree to he governed^ they leave that po- 
sition and begin to travel towards Rome.^ In those 
churches that are drifting towards absolute despot- 
ism, reformers will arise now and then, as they have 
already frequently arisen, who will seek to stem the 
increasing power and tyranny of the feiv^ and re- 

gational churches ! Unlike the stated associations formed among 
us in most countries, they lead to Presbyterianism." — Ecclesias- 
tical Polity of the New Testament, by Samuel Davidson, D. D. 
p. 271. 

"If you were to take the great mass of the people of England, 
you would find a burst of righteous indignation against them (the 
Tractarians). They would say, ' If we are to have Popery, let 
us have honest old Popery, at once. If you are right, you do 
not go far enough ; and if you are wrong, you go too far.' " — Rev. 
Mr. Stowell, cited by Dr. Coleman in his Primitive Church, p. 85. 

^ See Appendix, Note D. 



48 THE CHURCH POLITY 

store to the people their divine but lost rights. In 
all great religious reformations in consolidated 
churches, the tendency is always back towards the 
primitive mode of church government. Under the 
influences of the Reformation of Geneva and Scot- 
land, converted men passed at once from Popery to 
Presbyterianism, a long step towards the simple, 
scriptural form of a church. Under the same kind 
of influence, Luther passed, at one stride, from 
Popery to Congregationalism. And no man, "who 
conscientiously takes the Bible for his infallible rule 
of practice, as did the Pilgrims, can logically or 
morally avoid coming over to their system, though it 
be through fire and blood, and a second exile for 
freedom to worship God. For it must for ever stand 
an immovable fact, that the brotherhood of a local 
chm'ch is the highest judicial and executive tribunal 
known in the New Testament. If we have a right 
to have any tribunal higher than this, we have a 
right to have any tribunal we please, and any form 
of chui'ch government whatever, according to our 
own taste or fancy, or ideas of expediency, entirely 
regardless of the Scriptures. 

Here we might rest the case. The argument, 
which we have briefly sketched, proves, beyond all 
reasonable controversy, that the church polity of the 
Pilgrims was that instituted by Christ and the apos- 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 49 

ties. The chief recommendation of Congregation- 
alism is its scriptoralness. In the language of a 
learned English divine : " It rests on the immovable 
basis of the Divine Word. It challenges inquiry 
because of its sacred foundation. Whoever under- 
takes to overthrow it, must assail it chiefly with 
weapons drawn from the Bible." 

But if we would make what is certain doubly cer- 
tain, there is still an historical argument of great 
force, that brings us to the same conclusion. All 
the accredited evidence that can be gathered from 
other sources than the New Testament goes to 
prove that the churches of the primitive Christians 
were Congregational churches. Dr. John Owen lays 
down, and, with the most elaborate research, estab- 
lishes the proposition, " that in no approved writers^ 
for the space of two hundred years after Christy is 
there any mention made of any other organical, visi- 
bly professing- church, but that only lohich is pai'ochial 
or congregationalP ^ The most accredited church 
historians render similar testimony. " We are dis-- 
posed to believe," says Neander, " that the church 
was at first composed entirely of members standing 
on an equality with one another, and that the 
apostles alone held a higher rank, and exercised a 



^ Owen's Works, Yol. XV. p. 27 7. 
5 



50 THE CHURCH POLITY 

directing influence over the whole." ^ Again he 
says : " As regards the relation in which the presby- 
ters stood to the communities [churches], they were 
not designed to exercise absolute authority, but to 
act as presiding officers, and guides of an ecclesias- 
tical republic ; to conduct all things, with the coop- 
eration of the communities, as their ministers, and 
not their masters." ^ 

" The principal voice," says Mosheim, " was that 
of the people^ or of the whole body of Christians; 
for even the apostles themselves inculcated, by their 
example, that nothing of any moment was to be 
done or determined on but with the knowledge and 
consent of the brotherhood." " The assembled peo- 
ple elected their own rulers and teachers, or by their 
free consent received such as were nominated to 
them. ... In a word, the people did every thing 
that is proper for those in whom the supreme power 
of the community is vested. . . . Among all mem- 
bers of the church, of whatever class or condition, 
there was the most perfect equality."^ Again, he 
says of the churches of the first century : " All the 
churches, in those primitive times, were independent 
bodies; or none of them subject to the jurisdic- 

^ Neander's Planting and Training of the Church, p. 33. 
2 Neander's Church History, Yol. I. p. 189. 
^ Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Murdock's Translation, 
Vol. I. p. 68. 



OP THE PILGRIMS. 51 

tion of any other. For, though the churches which 
were founded by the apostles themselves frequently 
had the honor shown them to be consulted in diffi- 
cult and doubtful cases, yet they had no judicial 
authority, no control, no power of giving laws. On 
the contrary, it is clear as the noonday, that all 
Christian churches had equal rights^ and were in all 
respects on a footing of equality. Nor does there 
appear, in this first century, any vestige of that con- 
sociation of the churches of the same province 
w^hich gave rise to ecclesiastical councils and to metro- 
politansy ^ Of the second century he says : " Dar- 
ing a great part of this century, all the churches 
continued to be, as at first, independent of each other, 
or were connected by no consociations or confedera- 
tions. Each church was a kind of small, indepen- 
dent republic, governing itself by its own laws, 
enacted, or at least sanctioned, by the people." ^ 

Still again we find this reliable historian saying : 
" Although all the churches were, in the first age of 
Christianity, united together in one common bond 
of faith and love, and were, in every respect, ready 
to promote the interests and welfare of each other by 
a reciprocal interchange of good offices, yet, with re- 
gard to government and internal economy, every 

^ Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Vol. I. p. 72. 
2 Ibid. p. 116. 



52 THE CHURCH POLITY 

individual church considered itself as an independent 
^community, none of them ever looking, in these re- 
spects, beyond the circle of its own members for 
assistance, or recognizing any sort of external influ- 
ence or authority. Neither in the New Testament 
nor in any ancient document whatever do we find 
any thing recorded, from whence it might be inferred 
that any of the minor churches were at all dependent 
on, or looked up for direction to, those of greater 
magnitude or consequence ; on the contrary, several 
things occur therein, which put it out of all doubt 
that every one of them enjoyed the same rights, and 
was considered as being on a footing of the most 
perfect equality with the rest. Indeed it cannot, — I 
will not say be proved, but even be made to appear 
probable, from any testimony, divine or human, that 
in this age it was the practice for several churches to 
enter into and maintain amongst themselves, that 
sort of association which afterwards came to subsist 
amongst the churches of almost every province." ^ 

"They [the apostles]," says Dr. Coleman, "insti- 
tuted no external form of union or confederation 
between [the churches] of different towns or prov- 
inces ; nor within the first century of the Christian 
era can any trace of such a confederacy, whether 

^ Mosheim's Historical Commentaries on Christianity in the 
First Three Centuries, Vol. I. p. 196. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 53 

diocesan or conventional, be detected on the page of 
history. The diocesan, metropolitan, and patriarchal 
forms of organization belong to a later age. The 
idea of a holy catholic church, one and indivisible, 
had not yet arisen in the chm'ch, nor had it assumed 
any outward form of union. Wherever converts to 
Christianity were multiplied, they formed themselves 
into a church, under the guidance of their religious 
teachers, for the enjoyment of Christian ordinances. 
But each individual church constituted an indepen- 
dent and separate community. The society was 
purely voluntary, and every church so constituted 
was strictly independent of all others in the conduct 
of its worship, the admission of its members, the ex- 
ercise of its discipline, the choice of its officers, and 
the entire management of its affairs. They were, 
in a word, independent republics." ^ 

Now this was the church polity of the Pilgrim 
Fathers. They took for their model the churches of 
the New Testamxcnt. They went back to the primi- 
tive Christians, and copied, as closely as possible, 
their form of church government. It is sometimes 
said that the Rev. John Robinson, the godly pastor 
of the Leyden-Plymouth Church, was the author of 
Congregationalism. But no. " It was instituted," 

^ The Primitive Churcli, by Coleman, p. 47. — See Appendix, 
Note E. 

5* 



54 THE CHUECH POLITY 

says John Cotton, " and practised in the first ages of 
Christianity, and our Saviour himself is the true au- 
thor of this first ecclesiastical state of the church." 
" The primitive churches of the apostolic age," says 
Gov. Winslow, "were the pattern which Mr. Rob- 
inson had in his eye." It may seem strange that 
this primitive and scriptural form of the Christian 
church should have been disregarded for so many 
centuries, and have been revived again only two cen- 
turies and a half ago. But ecclesiastical corruption 
and despotism crushed it out. The world was not 
worthy of it; and, therefore, for more than thirteen 
centuries in the world, it was like its Great Author, 
who had not where to lay his head. The Pilgrims 
searched for the account of it in the New Testa- 
ment, and found it ; and, believing that the form of a 
church which they thus found and adopted was 
divine, the only form which Christ designed to leave, 
the only form which the apostles taught by word or 
practice; and, therefore, believing that it differed 
from all human societies or organizations in this, 
that it was divine^ and that no man or body of men 
on earth, not even the members of a local church 
themselves, had any authority to alter its constitu- 
tion, its ordinances, or its offices, Christ being its 
only lawgiver, they labored and suffered and prayed 
for it amidst persecutions and in exile, until they en- 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 55 

tered into their rest. They bequeathed their hard- 
earned liberty to revive and enjoy this first and 
divine form of a Christian church to their descend- 
ants. The Congregationalism of New England is 
the church polity of the Pilgrims. And it is this, 
my hearers, your own church order, so precious in 
itself and in its history ; the church order of the 
Pilgrim Fathers ; the church order of Christ and the 
apostles ; that you are called upon to-day to give to 
your country. 

II. But, in the second place, the divine origin of 
the church polity of the Pilgrims is not the only ar- 
gument with which I would commend it to your 
most favorable regard. If it is divine, it doubtless 
has an inherent fitness for its ends worthy of its 
divinity. If it is the church order of Christ and the 
apostles, we might reasonably expect that it would 
have intrinsic excellences and aptitudes, as a sys- 
tem of church government, peculiar to itself, and 
consequently be endowed with a power for good in 
the world, preeminent, and worthy of its Author. I 
have time to mention only a few of these excellen- 
ces, and shall select those which seem to me best 
fitted to impress our minds with the great wisdom, 
and the duty, of more earnest and systematic effort, 
on the part of our churches, to extend this apostolic 
and primitive system of church government through- 
out our country. 



56 THE CHURCH POLITY 

1. In the first place, this divine church polity is 
peculiarly fitted to reach and elevate the masses of 
the people. Congregationalism is founded upon the 
principle, that the church is made for the many, and 
not merely for the few. As the Saviour said of the 
Sabbath, so we may say of the church ; the church 
was made for man, and not man for the church. 
But when the great mass of the members are made 
the mere slaves of a great and imposing church sys- 
tem, or of a church oligarchy installed over them, 
the church is no longer made for the masses, but 
they are made for the church. The primary design 
of this divine Institution is thus defeated. That 
which was wisely fitted to promote the highest good 
of the many is so perverted as to become a ponder- 
ous machine for making the many subserve the am- 
bitious and selfish interests of the few. The church 
polity of the Pilgrims prevents any approach to such 
a perversion of this divine Institution, by placing 
the entire government of each local church in the 
hands of its members. And it is just this feature of 
this church polity that makes it so admirably fitted 
to develop the natural powers, as weU as the Chris- 
tian character, of every member, and so to elevate 
the whole mass of the brethren intellectually and 
spiritually. The church is thus made to subserve the 
real interests of its members. It calls them all up, 



OF THE PILGREMS. 57 

even the very humblest of them, to an arena of 
high and responsible personal action. The govern- 
ment of a church of Christ is in their hands. The 
acts of a church are often more momentous than the 
acts of a nation ; and no church action can be taken 
except by the suffrages of the members ; and thus 
the very lowliest as well as the most gifted brother 
is called upon to deliberate upon every question 
coming before them, to decide independently and 
definitely upon the expediency or inexpediency, the 
Tightness or wrongness, of the action proposed, and 
to render his judgment accordingly. No person can 
be received into the church until all the members 
have had an opportunity to ascertain and weigh well 
the evidence of his fitness for the communion of the 
saints, and to make objections, if they shall deem it 
best. If any weighty matter of discipline is brought 
before the church, the very w^eakest as well as the 
strongest brother is called upon to prepare his mind 
and his heart for the high duty before him, and then 
to adjudicate upon the case to the best of his ability, 
faithfully and righteously pronouncing his judgment, 
responsible to Christ alone. In all this a silent but 
mighty influence is brought to bear upon each indi- 
vidual member, developing independence of thought, 
independence of action, manliness and force of char- 
acter. This wise system of church government is 



58 THE CHURCH POLITY 

wonderfully fitted to work upon mind. It was or- 
dained by him who made the soul, and who knows 
its worth. It does not treat men as if they were fit 
only to be parts of a machine, and could move only 
as they are moved by some all-controlling mechani- 
cal power above them. It treats men as if they 
ivere men, — as if they were endowed with free-will 
and immortal being, and must stand before God, 
each one for himself alone, and give an account of 
his own deeds done in the body; and therefore it 
rigorously and reverently conforms to the established 
laws of free and immortal mind. It was the pro- 
found remark of John Owen, that " churches may 
inform the minds of men, but they cannot enforce 
them." And then he adds, that, if the members of 
any church do not act freely, as they judge is their 
duty, and best for them, to act, " they therein differ 
not much from a herd of creatures that are called by 
another name." This divine church order proves its 
divinity by treating men as our Saviour treated 
them when he laid down his life to save them. It 
magnifies their worth. It especially exalts the re- 
deemed of the Lord, and orders all its conduct 
towards them as if they were those little ones, whom 
if any one offend, "it were better for him that a 
mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he 
were drowned in the depth of the sea." It raises 



OF THE PILGRDIS. 59 

them, one and all. in official position. It makes 
every brother alike responsible for the most momen- 
tous trusts. It places every member in a royal office, 
and calls upon him to administer his office, responsi- 
ble only to the Great Head of the church. It in- 
trusts every brother alike with the watch and care of 
the body of Christ. The poorest, lowliest brother 
holds this office equally with the most wealthy or 
gifted. And it is a regal office that he fills, for there 
is no one above him on earth. The officers of the 
church even are only his servants. The very highest 
of them is only his minister. He, that humble church- 
member, is in the regal office ; yea, more than a 
regal office, for no earthly potentate has the care of 
a world ; and a single soul is of more worth than a 
world. And thus, in this divine form of the church, 
every man is made his own king and his own priest, 
and therefore all the members are kings and priests 
unto God; which led the great historian Neander, 
as he pondered upon this primitive form of the 
church, to pronounce it " a divine kingdom of priests.''' 
A church polity which thus elevates the mass of 
the members, inclines them to fit themselves, by 
every means in their power, to meet the responsi- 
bilities of their elevated position. The committee 
room, the conference room, the church and prayer- 
meeting, the watch and care for which thev are 



60 THE CHURCH POLITY 

responsible, make them feel the need of developmg 
their powers, both of mind and of heart, to the ut- 
most degree, that they may discharge properly the 
high duties that have been devolved upon them. 
And then, from this increased mental culture and 
elevation of character in the church, goes out a 
mighty influence, reaching through all the commu- 
nity around, and promoting generally intelligence 
and virtue. Such a church polity goes right down 
among the masses of the people, and, by a thousand 
silent and winding influences, tends to make them, 
one and all, feel that they are called upon to take, 
and may take, a high position in life ; and thus they 
are stimulated to prepare themselves to occupy it. 
The very presence of such a church polity shows the 
necessity of the general education of the people ; 
and therefore it has happened that wherever the 
church order of the Pilgrims has gone, the school- 
house has gone, and well endowed academies and 
colleges have sprung up on every hand, as by en- 
chantment. It is a significant historical fact, that 
New England, the great seat of this church order, 
has been foremost of all the world in efforts to pro- 
mote popular education, and in the success which 
has attended them.^ It was here, under the influ- 

^ " In New England, so admirable is the scliool system, and so 
deserving of all imitation, that only one person over twenty 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 61 

ence of Congregationalism, that the experiment was 
made, for the first time in the world, of establishing 

years of age is incapable of reading and writing in every four 
hundred of the number of native whites. In the South and 
South-west, the number is one in about twelve ; and in the terri- 
tories, one in about six ; in the slave-holding States, one in twelve ; 
in the non-slaveholding, one in forty ; in the whole Union, one in 
about twenty-two." — United States Census, 1850. From the 
same source, we learn that the proportion of scholars at school 
to the whole population, is, in Maine, one scholar to every 3.1 
persons ; in Prussia, one scholar to 6.2 persons ; in Great Britain, 
one to 8.5; in France, one to 10.5; in Austria, one to 13.7; in 
Russia, one to 50. Or, to give a still more definite illustration, 
taken from another source, the proportion of white adults over 
twenty years of age who cannot read and write is, " in Con- 
necticut, 1 to every 568; in North Carolina, 1 to every 7. In 
Vermont, 1 to every 473; in South Carolina, 1 to every 17." — 
New Englander for 1857, p. 641. "Boston," — said Dr. Horner, 
President of the Geological Society in London, in conversation 
with the late Prof B. B. Edwards, — " Boston is doing more 
than the whole of England for popular education." This inher- 
ent tendency of CongregationaHsm, as a powerful stimulative to 
popular education, developed itself very early in New Eno-land. 
" It was ever the custom," says Mr. Bancroft, in his History of the 
United States, " and it soon became the law, in Puritan New 
England, that ' none of the brethren shall suffer so much barba- 
rism in their families as not to teach their children and appren- 
tices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the 
English tongue.' " And again he says : " In these measures [of 
education], especially in the laws estabhshing common schools, 
6 



62 THE CHURCH POLITY 

free schools. General thrift and enterprise have 
followed in the wake of this universal intellectual 
culture, and, therefore, the praise of New England 
is in all the world. 

Nor is this system less adapted to the higher than 
the lower classes in society. It would be strange 
indeed if a church polity, which is divinely fitted to 
the intellectual and moral constitution of man, 
should not be able to carry him on from any degree 
of elevation in the scale of being which he will be 
likely to reach in his eai-thly life. It has shown 
itself to be peculiarly congenial to great minds and 
generous natures. " Two centuries ago," says an 
English A^aiter, " Congregationalism could make 
mention of knights and nobles, of some of the greatest 
names in literatui-e and in arms, and of not a few 
among the most intelligent and wealthy in the 
middle class, as giving to it their honest preference 
before all the systems of that age. The most in- 
teresting space, beyond all comparison, in the his- 
tory of British intellect, was the space bet\veen 
1640 and 1660 ; but the ti'ue manhood of those 

lies the secret of the success and character of New England. 
Every child, as it was born into the world, was lifted from the 
earth by the genius of the country, and, in the statutes of the 
land, received as its bui;hright a pledge of the public care for its 
morals and its mind." 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 63 

memorable times was clearly the manhood of Eng- 
lish Independency. Many noble spirits then sighed 
to be free, — free in law, free in thought, free in utter- 
ance, — and it was in the nature of Independency to 
give them what they sought." ^ And what province, 
we may ask, without any boasting, has produced a 
larger number of the imperial minds of the present 
age, of those most distinguished for all that consti- 
tutes a complete and efficient manhood, than New 
England, where Congregationalism, more than any- 
where else in the world, exerts its elevating influ- 
ences alike upon all classes in society ? 

Carry, then, the church polity of the Pilgi'ims to 
the great West ; carry it into all the borders of our 
country ; cany it over the world. It is a fair argu- 
ment for the great wisdom of this course, that the 
system itself is so divinely fitted to all classes in 
society, reaching the masses of the people, and 
elevating everywhere the popular mind and the 
popular character. 

2. In the second place, the polity of the Pilgrims 
in the church is preeminently congenial with, and 
tends to promote, republicanism in the state. This 
form of church government is purely democratic. It 
intimates to the people their right to govern them- 

^ See Congregationalism and Modern Society, by Robert 
Yaughan, D. D., pp. 79, 80. 



64 THE CHURCH POLITY 

selves, and at the same time convinces them that 
self-government in the state, as well as in the church, 
is possible. It also tends to prepare them to use the 
rights and privileges secm-ed in civil freedom, intelli- 
gently and properly; and so its whole influence and 
tendency, in this regard, is towards a democratic or 
republican form of civil government.^ 

This powerful tendency of Congregationalism has 
been frequently recognized as an historical fact. 
Even David Hume, speaking of the Puritans, whose 
ecclesiastical tendency was so obviously towards the 
freest church polity, was candid enough to affirm, 
that, " to this sect the English owe the whole free- 
dom of their constitution." Lord Brougham af- 
firms of the Independents, that they are " a body of 
men to be held in lasting veneration for the unshaken 
fortitude with which, in all times, they have main- 
tained their attachment to civil liberty; men to 
whose ancestors England will ever acknowledge a 
boundless debt of gratitude, as long as freedom is 
prized among us. For, I freely confess it, they, with 
whatever ridicule some may visit their excesses, or 
with whatever blame others, they, with the zeal of 
martyrs and with the purity of the early Christians, 
the skill and courage of the most renowned war- 
riors, achieved for England the free constitution 

^ See Appendix, note F. 



OF THE PILaRIMS. 65 

which she now enjoys." Of the same character is 
the testimony of Lord King. "As for toleration," 
he says, " or any true notion of religious liberty, or 
any general freedom of conscience, we owe them not 
in the least degree to what is called the Church of 
England. On the contrary, we owe all these to the 
Independents in the time of the Commonwealth, and 
to Locke, their most enlightened and illustrious dis- 
ciple." " We are prepared to expect," says a learned 
English author, " that those belonging to Indepen- 
dent churches, being accustomed to self-government, 
will sympathize in a liberal and popular form of 
civil administration where the people are fairly and 
fully represented. If they perceive that the interests 
of a spiritual society are best promoted by encourag- 
ing all the members to understand and feel their 
personal responsibility in the transaction of ecclesi- 
astical business, they will be led to infer that the 
form of civil government which provides for a like 
sense of responsibility by allowing the people gen- 
erally to exercise the rights of freemen, cannot be 
wrong. Habituated to self-government in the one 
department, they wiU desire the same principles in 
another. Such as live under the prelatic system, 
where the clergy are sent to them without their 
wishes being consulted or the nature of their wants 
studied, and where they are exempted, to a large ex- 
6* 



66 THE CHURCH POLITY 

tent, from the exercise of independent thought, will 
more readily acquiesce in a constitution under which 
they possess a like exemption. But men who are 
intrusted with a weighty commission in things 
spiiitual will not be so easily satisfied with the pas- 
siveness of a condition where the few shut them out 
from the exercise of rights belonging to every subject 
of a free government. They will carry the same 
principles of liberty into the one department which 
they cherish in the other, believing them to be sanc- 
tioned of Heaven for the promotion, not less of the 
temporal than of the spiritual well-being of man- 
kind." This natural and inevitable tendency of 
'Congregationalism to promote civil and religious 
freedom is manifest throughout the entire history of 
this church order in England. The Independents 
never wavered in their demand for religious tolera- 
tion, nor in theii' defence of it when obtained. It 
was by this persistent adherence to those principles 
-of liberty taught them by their church polity that 
they saved England, not only from the tyranny to 
which prelacy always tends, but also from that with 
which even the Presbyterians sought to destroy her 
religious freedom the only time they were ever in 
power with the civil government. " Twice in their 
native land," history affirms, the Puritans " saved 
the British constitution from being crushed by the 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 67 

usurpations of the Stuarts." " Where," asks one of 
New England's greatest orators,^ speaking of the 
Puritans, " where, in the long series of ages that fur- 
nish the matter of history, was there ever one [race], 
— where one better fitted, by the possession of the 
highest traits of man, to do the noblest work of 
man ; better fitted to consummate and establish the 
Reformation, — to save the English constitution, at 
its last gasp, from the fate of other European con- 
stitutions, and prepare, on the granite and iced 
mountain summits of the New World, a still better 
rest for a still better liberty ? " 

But, not to speak further of Independency as the 
source and stay of English liberty, what is the rela- 
tion of the free church polity of the Pilgrims to 
our own republicanism ? We could not live under 
an absolute despotism. We love our civil free- 
dom. It is our pride, and the hope of the world. 
But how came our government to be republican ? 
The first settlers of this country did not come hither 
to establish this particular form of a government, 
or, indeed, any independent government whatever. 
They came hither from various motives ; but this was 
not, to any general extent, one of them. And when, 
at last, the time came for them to renounce all 
kingly rule and to set up an independent civil organ- 

^ Hon. Kufus Choate. 



68 THE CHURCH POLITY 

ization, many opposed it as one of the worst calam- 
ities that could befall the country, while very many 
of those who approved of the Revolution, yet re- 
gretted that they should be driven to the measure. 
Our fathers, it is true, came hither for religious and 
civil freedom ; but they had hoped to enjoy this with- 
out going to the full length of pure republicanism. 
How happened it, then, when an independent gov- 
ernment came to be instituted, that it assumed this 
particular form? Doubtless many influences con- 
spired to this result. But this question has not been 
duly weighed. The really determinative cause of 
our particular form of government has not been 
made sufficiently prominent. There is a connection 
between the church polity of the Pilgrim Fathers 
and the civil polity which they adopted, and also be- 
tween then* civil polity and that which the nation 
subsequently accepted, which has not been suffi- 
ciently traced and pondered. The purely democratic 
form of government in the Church at Leyden, al- 
ready entrenched in the warm affections of the Pil- 
grims, led to the adoption of a corresponding form 
of civil government on board the Mayflower for the 
colony at Plymouth. It has been said, and it is 
true, that it was a Congregational church meeting 
that first suggested the idea of a New England town 
meeting; and a New England town meeting em- 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 69 

bodies all the germinal principles of our state and 
national governments.^ Unquestionably, through 

^ " For more than eighteen j^ears," says Mr. Bancroft, speak- 
ing of the Plymouth Colony, " ' the whole body of the male in- 
habitants ' constituted the legislature ; the state "was governed, 
like our towns, as a strict democracy ; and the people were fre- 
quently convened to decide on executive, not less than on judi- 
cial, questions." Thus perfectly was the government of the state 
modelled after that of their church. 

" The New Testament is emphatically a republican book. It 
sanctions no privileged orders ; it gives no exclusive rights. All 
who imbibe its spirit and obey its precepts are recognized as 
equals, — children of the same Father, brethren and sisters in 
Christ, and heirs to a common inheritance. In the spirit of these 
kind and endearing relations, the first Christians formed them- 
selves into little republican communities, acknowledging no head 
but Jesus Christ, and regulating all their concerns by mutual 
consultation, and a popular vote of the brotherhood. In these 
distinct and independent societies was realized, for the first time 
in this world, the perfect idea of civil and religious liberty. The 
Puritans imbibed the same spirit and derived their principles 
from the same pure source of light, of holiness and freedom. 
They modelled their churches after the primitive form, and 
founded them on the basis of entire independence and equality 
of rights • These were the men who settled New Eng- 
land. They came hither, bearing in their bosoms the sacred love 
of liberty and religion ; and ere they left the little bark that had 
borne them across the ocean, they formed themselves ' into a 
civil body politic,' having for its basis this fundamental principle, 
that they should he ruled by the majority. Here is brought out 



70 THE CHTIRCH POLITY 

this channel came the strongest of the influences 
that conspired to make om- form of civil government 
republican. For the members of the church at 
Plymouth influenced the churches at Salem, Boston, 
and Charlestown to adopt the same church polity 
with themselves ; and thus was brought to bear upon 
the men of those places the same influence that had 
been so long moulding the political opinions of the 
members of the Leyden-Ply mouth Church. And 
then, by the further extension of this church polity, 
^^^th the gradual multiplication and gl*o^•\th of the 
colonies, this same influence was brought to bear 
upon ail New England, and actually formed the 
political opinions of those of her leading men who 
were after^vards called to help construct our national 
government. It is very significant of the powerful 
working of this influence of CongTegationalism upon 
the public mind immediately before the founding of 
the republic, that, in the single year 1772, the famous 
book, \\Titten by the Rev. John Wise more than half 

tlie grand idea of a free, eleetiye gOTerninent. Here is the germ, 
of tliat tree of liberty wliicli now rears its loft}' top to the heav- 
ens, spreading its branches over the length and breadth of our 
land, and under whose shade seventeen millions of freemen are 
reposing. The spirit of all our free civil and religious institutions 
was in the breasts of our Pilgrim fathers." — Hawes' Tribute to 
the Memory of the Pilgrims, as quoted hj Dr. Coleman, in his 
Primitive Church, pp. 240, 241. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 71 

a century before, and entitled, "A Vindication of the 
Government of the Churches of New England," was 
reprinted twice, and the second reprint largely sub- 
scribed for by leading political men. In this book, 
two editions of which were thus scattered broadcast 
among the people only four years before the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and fifteen before the forma- 
tion of the Constitution of the United States, thou- 
sands of the intelligent voters of New England read 
many a profound political truth, which must have 
stirred their souls with an unconquerable purpose to 
maintain their civil rights against all usurpation aiid 
tyi-anny. There is the true ring of our republican 
freedom in the following sentences, taken at random, 
from its pages : " B?/ a natnral right, all men are horn 
free ; and, nature having set all men upon a level and 
made them equals, no servitude or subjection can 
be conceived without inequality ; and this cannot be 
made without usurpation or force in others, or vol- 
untary compliance in those who resign their freedom, 
and give away their degree of natural being." " The 
first human subject and original of civil power is the 
'peopUr " The prince who strives to subvert the 
fundamental laws of the society is the traitor and 
the rebel, and not the people, who endeavor to pre- 
serve and defend their own." "A democracy was 
the noble government which beat out in all the bad 



72 THE CHURCH POLITY 

weather of ten bloody persecutions under the man- 
agement of antiquity." " The end of all good gov- 
ernment is to cultivate humanity and promote the 
happiness of all, and the good of every man in all 
his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, etc., without 
injury or abuse done to any." It was a book with 
such sentiments as these that Congregationalism 
gave to New England at that critical juncture in her 
history when the people were preparing to decide 
upon the form of their national government. And 
this is only one of many similar indications of the 
powerful influence which our church polity was then 
exerting upon the people, and by which it was rap- 
idly moulding their political opinions, and preparing 
them to constitute and maintain a strictly republican 
government. We are not at all surprised to find 
one of the delegates from Massachusetts to the Fed- 
eral Convention a few years afterwards telling that 
body, with great emphasis, that "there was not a 
one thousandth part of his fellow-citizens who were 
not against every approach towards monarchy." 

Nor was the influence of this church polity con- 
fined to New England. It reached some, at least, 
of those men beyond her borders who afterwards 
took a prominent part in laying the foundations of 
the republic. " Several years before the American 
Revolution, there was, near the house of Mr. JefTer- 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 73 

son, in Virginia, a church which was governed on 
Congregational principles, and whose monthly meet- 
ings he often attended. Being asked how he was 
pleased with their church government, he replied 
that it had struck him with great force, and inter- 
ested him very much ; that he considered it the only 
form of pure democracy that then existed in the 
world, and had concluded that it would be the best 
plan of government for the American colonies." ^ It 
is said to have been the opinion of Mr. Pitt, " that, 
if the Church of England had been efficiently estab- 
lished in the North American colonies, they would 
never have refused allegiance to the British crown." 
English statesmen early discerned, what many in 
our own country now fail to see, that Congi'egation- 
alism, far more than any other church polity, cher- 
ishes republicanism in the state ; and it indicates the 
extent and the sincerity of their fears in this respect, 
that they " sent agents hither for the purpose of se- 
curing the abolition of our ecclesiastical polity, and 
introducing a more authoritative and ostentatious 
government." ^ It is, moreover, already the verdict 
of dispassionate history, that in the Mayflower came 
hither the germ of our republic. Mr. Bancroft 

^ See Jeflferson's Notes on Yirginia. 

^ See Sermon on Duties of New England Clergy, by Prof.. 
E. A. Park, D. D., p. 15. 



74 THE CHUECH POLITY 

speaks of the civil compact formed by the Plymouth 
colony as " the birth of popular constitutional liber- 
ty." And again, speaking of the Pilgrims, he says : 
" The citizens of the United States should cherish 
the memory of those who founded a state on the 
basis of democratic liberty, — the fathers of the coun- 
try, — the men who, as they first trod the soil of the 
New World, scattered the seminal principles of 
republican freedom and national independence." 
" To Congregationalism," says an eminent journal- 
ist,^ " we doubtless owe the free and happy structure 
of our political institutions ; for wherein they are 
not directly imitated from that excellent model, they 
were framed by those whose minds were deeply im- 
bued with the spirit and liberality of its principles." 
There is — there must be — a connection between 
the government of the church and that of the state, 
not necessarily formal and coerced, but none the less 
mighty because it is simply a fi-ee, undesigned con- 
nection of silent and formative influence; and no- 
where is that connection more obvious than between 
the church polity of the Pilgrims and the form of 
our civil government. Our fathers first learned that 
there could be a church without a bishop, and then 
they knew there could be a state without a king. In 

^ David Hale. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 75 

the brotherhood of the local church, in that pure 
democracy organized for the purpose of promoting 
personal holiness and the worship and service of 
God, was first caught the true idea of civil freedom, 
as founded upon the intelligence and virtue of the 
people. Our popular government lay in embryo on 
board the Mayflower, all-environed with its only 
possible preservatives, popular intelligence and pop- 
ular virtue. The idea born there, and embodied 
in a civil constitution for that little democracy, 
grew with the growth of the colonies, gradually ex- 
pelling from the thoughts and affections of the peo- 
ple all other theories of civil government, until 
finally it enthroned itself in the national mind, and 
then embodied itself in our national government. 

Now it is a fair question, whether our form of 
government can be wholly, or even for the most part, 
dissevered from the church polity that begat it, and 
yet survive. The problem of our republicanism is 
yet to be solved ; and who can say that that problem 
is not indissolubly linked with this other, whether 
that church polity of the Pilgrims which is related 
to our civil polity as a mother to her child is to be 
shut up in one corner of our country, as if it were 
some monster, that, if unloosed, would devour her 
own offspring, or is to go unimpeded into all parts 
of the land, and everywhere, by its silent but mighty 



76 THE CHURCH POLITY 

educating influences, elevate the masses of the peo- 
ple, and render them competent to be citizens of a 
free government. One thing, at least, we may 
affirm : Let the church polity of the Pilgi'ims have 
free sway in all the borders of our country, and the 
perpetuity of those free institutions which it has 
brought into existence and nurtured to maturity, and 
with which its whole spirit is so singularly conge- 
nial, would be in far less danger than now.^ Here 

^ " There is notliing that so arouses the activity of the intel- 
lect, — nothing reaches down so far into the very elements of our 
being, as the conviction of our personal duty in conducting the 
affairs of the kingdom of God on earth. The obligation to 
select wise legislators in the state, to secure the passage of 
wholesome laws, invigorates the mind less, expands the charities 
of the heart less, than the obligation to watch over, to advise, and 
to aid, the assembly of the brethren. If the pious men in the 
provinces of France had been trained, during the last two cen- 
turies, under the discipline of New England churches, judging 
for themselves with regard to doctrine and practice, feeHng 
themselves called of Heaven to give their individual advice or 
their own individual reasons, at the assembling of the local 
church, and at the ecclesiastical council, there would have gone 
forth from these men an influence quickening the mind of the 
entire community, and the nation, which is now too ill ti'ained for 
preserving a republic, would have been too well trained to en- 
dure an usurpation. And it is partly for the maintaining of our 
political institutions, for the educating of our people to give an 
intelligent suffrage, that we desire to see the same ecclesiastical 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 77 

lies one great argument for a more general and 
rapid extension of the Congregational charch polity. 
It is to save our country. It is to infuse into our 
national life its only preservative and vitalizing ele- 
ment. It is to carry into every part of the land that 
one instrumentality which, above all others, is fitted 
to prepare the people, by nurturing their intelligence 
and virtue, to appreciate and maintain a free gov- 
ernment. By all the fond hopes, therefore, which 
you entertain for the future of your country under 
its popular institutions, carry the ecclesiastical prin- 
ciples of the Pilgrims into every part of the land, 
and let them work ; let them inform the popular 
mind ; let them educate the people to give a wise 
suffrage, and, by a thousand silent influences, render 
them generally competent to appreciate and perpetu- 
ate the rich civil heritage they have received firom 
the Pilgrim Fathers. 

3. In the third place, the church polity of the Pil- 
grims has peculiar fitnesses to the present imperfect 
state of the members of a Christian church. There 
doubtless are, and, in the present order of things, 

principles moulding the character of our Western States as 
helped to form the intellect and conscience of our New England 
colonies." — See Address before the American, Congregational 
Union, by Prof. E. A. Park, D. D., p. 23. 
7* 



78 THE CHURCH POLITY 

there doubtless must be, in every church, those who 
are not true Christians ; while the best are but par- 
tially sanctified. The most perfect system of church 
government, in the hands of such men, will be 
worked more or less imperfectly. Out of such a 
state of the church, evils will arise, which no kind of 
church polity can wholly prevent. There will be 
wicked men to vex the church ; there will be ambi- 
tious men seeking to make it a means of personal 
aggrandizement ; there will be worldly men to kill 
out its very life by their spiritual deadness ; there 
will be collisions of opinion and personal interest, 
animosities and heart-burnings between imperfect 
brethren, which will often embroil the whole church, 
and sometimes leave it in dissevered fragments. 
But we confidently affirm, that there is no system of 
church government that can so effectually restrain 
these evils, or, if they are not wholly restrained, can 
manage them with so little commotion in the world, 
and with so little injury to the church, as that of 
Congregationalism. There is little about this sys- 
tem that can be made to subserve the interests of 
wicked men. Its very simplicity is its protection 
from their wiles. It has no places of preferment, no 
ecclesiastical offices, towering high above all the 
churches, to tempt the ambition and employ the 
thoughts of ministers, when they should be caring 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 79 

for the flocks over which alone God has made them 
overseers. It has no ecclesiastical machinery raised 
above and controlling all the churches, of which 
wicked men, and even too aspiring good men, will 
always love to get the management, merely for the 
pleasure of working it, if not for more selfish pur- 
poses.i It has no rising grade of imposing judica- 
tories, occasioning, in their management, endless 
collisions and wranglings and heart-burnings, em- 
ploying themselves often year after year in hot 
debate over some trivial case of difiiculty that would 
have been settled at one session of a local church, 
when its authority is understood to be supreme, and 
thus occupying a large portion of the invaluable 
time and strength of ministers, to the neglect of the 
great work of the gospel ministry. Still, difficulties 
will arise, even in complete, local churches ; but, as 
these bodies are distinct, and independent of each 

^ " Who does not know that the curse of a graceless ministry 
has ever rested upon the church, to a greater or less extent, 
■wherever they have not enjoyed the right of electing their own 
pastors? The rich and quiet livings of an establishment, espe- 
cially if coupled with the authority, the distinction, and emolu- 
ments, of the Episcopal office, will ever be an object of ambition 
to worldly men. ' Make me a bishop,' — said an ancient idola- 
tor, — ' make me a bishop, and I will surely be a Christian.' " — 
See The Primitive Church, by Dr. Coleman, p. 84. 



80 THE CHURCH POLITY 

other, none can be injured except the one in which 
the difficulty happens to occur. And even in this 
the heat more generally soon effervesces, and leaves 
the waters as peaceful as before. As the local 
church is all open above, the steam that is generated 
in these embroilments passes quietly away, and 
does no harm ; but where there is a great and com- 
pact system of machinery to gather and condense it, 
the greatest commotion, and wide spread disasters, 
often follow. In these consolidated systems of 
church government, the smallest difficulty in one 
church may, and often does, rend asunder a whole 
communion; while difficulties arising in the supreme 
government itself are almost sure to produce disas- 
trous and irremediable divisions. Thus the Presby- 
terian Church in Scotland has already been rent into 
no less than five distinct fragments. The Presbyte- 
rian church of our own country is not an exception 
to this inevitable working of its system. These 
complicated, centralized church organizations are not 
the best fitted to secure the ends of a church in a 
world like ours. By their very structure they are too 
much exposed. In the great conffict with sin, they 
work to the greatest disadvantage, and often are only 
themselves shattered to pieces in their first encounter. 
But when the churches are all distinct and indepen- 
dent, connected only by the mutual attraction of 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 81 

• 

Christian love, there is no such exposure. Their 
"working is then like that of the planetary system, 
where each world is united to all the rest by the 
mutual attraction of gravitation, and where all colli- 
sion is avoided by that simple centrifugal force that 
keeps each world moving on in its own course, in- 
tent only upon its own business. And if by chance 
any disaster should happen to one of these planets, 
— as perhaps there once did, — and it should be 
shattered into a thousand fragments, still all the rest 
would move on in their wonted harmony. But sup- 
pose our planetary system was less divine, and more 
human, — suppose the worlds, instead of rolling on 
in their present easy and graceful independence, 
were all connected by some vast system of machinery 
reared above them and resting on them, having all 
the weight and rigidity of bars of iron, and so stif- 
fening the whole system into one great and imposing 
body, — who cannot see, that then the slightest 
shock upon one world would be equally a shock to 
all, and that the ruin of one might be the ruin of the 
whole ? Who cannot see also, that all the grating 
and jarring of the superincumbent machinery would 
be felt in threatening vibrations alike by every 
world ? and that, if any great disaster should happen 
to this machinery in the process of its working, it 
would be equally a disaster to all the worlds which 



82 THE CHURCH POLITY 

• 

it embraced and connected ? The divine method in 
the planetary system is better. And, for the same 
reason, we say that the divine method of connecting 
the churches of Christ is better than any consolidat- 
ing system. Let them be, as the Saviom' and the 
apostles left them, free, local churches, each distinct 
and complete in itself, moving on easily and grace- 
fully in its own line of duty, and yet all united by 
Christian love, and ever ready for the interchange of 
kind offices. 

But it is sometimes objected to this Congrega- 
tional system, that it fosters too much life in the 
individual churches ; that it does not keep them all 
quiet and tractable ; that it makes the members feel 
their independence too much ; and so stimulates 
them to intemperate zeal and action, making the 
churches so many hotbeds of error and fanaticism.^ 
But the ground of this inconsiderate objection we 
regard as one of the greatest excellences of the 
system. The superabundant light and heat of the 
sun are great blessings, though they may produce 
some unnecessary and even noisome vegetation, and 
now and then momentarily fill the air with trouble- 
some exhalations. We glory in just this feature of 
our church polity. We believe that life is better 

^ See Appendix, Note G. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 83 

than death ; — that some unnecessary commotion or 
visionary action is not so great an evil as utter stag- 
nation. Existence, to a man who is always asleep, 
is not preferable to death. " Aloof from practice," 
says Sir William Hamilton, " a waking error is 
better than the sleeping truth." The church of 
Christ should be a region of the intensest action. It 
is placed in a world that is all glowing and surging 
with life, and God never designed that his church 
should be like an island of ice on a sea of fire. The 
intensity of its burning zeal for God should even 
surpass the intensest ardor with which the world 
around it is pervaded. Too much life in a church 
of Christ ! Impossible. Indeed, we know not what 
would become of some of our more staid evangel- 
ical denominations, were they not constantly re- 
ceiving the overflow of this very life, and thus re- 
plenishing both their wasting ministry and mem- 
bership with men converted to God amidst this same 
intense action in our Congregational churches. It 
is right to look at facts, and guide ourselves by 
them ; and we are convinced, that, could accurate 
statistics be gathered, showing the extent to which 
several other denominations are dependent, upon 
Congregationalism for both ministers and laymen, 
it would not only surprise the world, but would be 
one of the strongest arguments for our system, and 



84 THE CHURCH POLITY 

one of the strongest, too, with which I could urge 
you to-day to carry this elevating and energizing 
church polity into every part of our country.^ Give 

^ " Proclamation has been made in high places, that within the 
last thirty years, ' about three hundred clergymen and licentiates 
of other denominations have sought the ministerial commission 
from the hands of bishops [in the Episcopal church] ; that two 
thirds of all ' the present clergy of the church have come from 
other folds,' and that of two hundred and eighty-fve persons 
ordained by a single bishop in New England, two hundred and 
seven were converts from other denominations. If the triumph 
were, that these hundreds of clergymen and thousands of laymen 
had been transformed from sin to holiness, we would exult in the 
glad news. We call heaven and earth to witness, that we re- 
joice in the advance of any sect whose pure aim is to gather the 
w^anderers from virtue into the congregation of the saints. But 
no ; the boast is, that converts have been made not from in- 
iquity to godliness, but from sects and denominations to what is 
called, in a peculiar style of Catholicism, the church." — Sermon 
on the Duties of the New England Clergy^ by Prof. E. A. 
Park, D. D., pp. 44, 45. 

There can be no doubt of the fact, that the Episcopalian 
church of New England is dependent, in the largest degree, 
upon Congregationalism for nominally converted laymen and 
clergymen. The fact is remarkably significant of the compar- 
ative evangeUcal efficiency of the two systems. And yet the 
unblushing manner in which Episcopalians often seek to pros- 
elyte members of Congregational churches, at the same time that 
they condemn their church polity, is peculiarly instnictive with 
regard to the capabilities of human nature. When they seek to 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 85 

this divine model of a living church to the West ; 
give it to the North and to the South ; and let its 

convert men to Clirist, rather than to proselyte them to their 
church, we do not complain ; we will pray for their success. 
But " already have some of our laymen been told that their 
pastor was never really ordained." " Our candidates for the 
ministry have been pointed to the bishops' robes, that float be- 
fore the fancy of young men." " Our ordained clergymen have 
been approached with assurances that rich preferments awaited 
them if they would cast contempt on their ordination, and 
kneel down in worship. ' Come unto us,' has been the language 
addressed to one ; ' for we have peace within the church, but all 
is division out of it.' ' Come unto us,' has been the language 
addressed to a second; 'tor we need your aid in quieting our 
dissensions.' ' Come unto us,' has been the language to a third ; 
* for the church has a beautiful unity.' ' Come unto us,' has been 
the language to a fourth ; ' for the church is made the more 
interesting by the varieties which are embraced in it.' ' Come 
unto us,' has been said here ; ' for we have a creed which pre- 
vents all such discussions as will always prevail among dissent- 
ers.' ' Come unto us,' has been said there ; ' for we always 
insure the greatest freedom of thought and debate.' ' Come 
unto us,' has been whispered* in this place; 'for the church is 
truly and securely evangelical.' ' Come unto us,' has been in- 
timated in that place ; ' for we stand in perishing need of evan- 
gelical men, who may save us from the reign of fashion and 
vanity.' * Come unto us,' has been the invitation to a pastor who 
had been ordained without a display of apostolical succession ; 
*for although you have been often ejected from your pulpits 
heretofore, we will give you a staiF of office which no popular 



86 THE CHURCH POLITY 

life overflow. Let it give converted men to all other 
denominations until they are full; yea, let it give 
them to all the world with a lavish hand, in beau- 
tiful imitation of its gi*eat Author, who, in the over- 
flow of his infinite love, rains his blessings on both 
the just and the unjust. 

4. In the fourth place, the church polity of the 
Pilgrims is peculiarly fitted to prepare the church to 
grapple successfully with the organic sins and gen- 
eral wickedness of the world. "We have reason to 
believe, both from the divinity of this system and 
from facts in its history, that in no other form of a 
church can Christianity be made so effective in its 
great work of renovating the world. From its very 
structure, its aggressive power is superior to that of 
any other ecclesiastical system. As it calls all the 

majority shall take away ; we will save j^ou from exhausting 
labors; we will furnisli you with prayers already made, and will 
allow your sermons to be few and short and inoffensive.' 
' Come unto us,' has been the inviting offer to a missionary ; ' for 
we need your services in awakening among our clergy the spirit 
of missions, and we can write your name, and give you a title, 
among the patriarchs of the East.'" — Prof E. A. Park's Sermon 
on the Duties of the New England Clergy, pp. 43, 44. 

It is also a well-known fact, that, besides the Episcopalian 
church, the Methodist and New School Presbyterian churches 
are largely indebted to Congregationalism for both church- 
members and ministers. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 87 

members of the church into personal action, it in- 
creases the aggregate effective force. This church 
polity is consistent with the scriptm*al teaching, that 
every disciple of Jesus is a soldier under the Cap- 
tain of his Salvation, for it marshals every church- 
member to the conflict. Like its great Author, it 
says to the timid and the faltering, " Whosoever will 
save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever shall lose 
his life for my sake and the gospel, the same shall 
save it." As it places upon every member alike the 
fearful responsibility of the watch and care of the 
church, so it tends to make them all alike regard 
themselves responsible for the general interests of the 
kingdom of Christ in the world. 

It is thus we account for the spontaneous and 
large liberality of Congregational churches in found- 
ing academies, colleges, and schools of divinity, and 
in starting and carrying forward so many magni- 
ficent schemes for the evangelization of the world. 
It is a significant fact, that all, or nearly all, of the 
great national benevolent societies of our land, 
which are doing so much to give tracts and Bibles 
and Sabbath schools and ministers and mission- 
aries to the world, had their origin in Congrega- 
tional churches, and, for the most part, have since 
been sustained by them. The men who have been 
most efficient in devising large things for the king- 



88 THE CHURCH POLITY 

dom of Christ without reference to their own sect 
or to any sect, during the last half century, have 
been themselves Congregationalists, and have relied 
mainly upon Congregational churches for aid to 
carry out their generous plans. " The same divine," ^ 
it is said, " who was one of the most active in origi- 
nating the oldest theological seminary in the land, 
was also one of the most active in starting the 
associated effort for our domestic missions, and was 
one of the two men who projected the oldest board 
for foreign missions ; the cause of learning, and the 
cause of an aggressive Christianity, being identified 
in his esteem. Two of the same divines ^ who 
originated that ancient seminary were the first to 
propose our most ancient education society, and one 
of the most honored pupils of that seminary,'^ stated, 
a few months before his demise : " I could never 
have done what I did in the incipient movements of 
the American Tract Society, nor in the forming of 
the American Temperance Society, nor in the es- 
tablishment of the American Sabbath Union, unless 
I had enjoyed the aid of a popular and unfettered 
church government, allowing me to combine the 



^ Dr. Samuel Spring. 

^ Drs. Pearson and Morse. 

^ Dr. Justin Edwards. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 89 

agencies of enterprising individuals, whenever and 
wherever I could find them, — men accustomed to 
act for themselves, — minute-men, ready for every 
good work, without waiting for the jarring and 
warring of church courts." ^ The first organized 
Christian effort in the world in behalf of seamen was 
made in Boston under the influence of Congrega- 
tionalism. Through these numerous reformative 
and missionary movements, in which the mem- 
bers of the churches have been brought to grapple 
hand to hand with various forms of sin without 
any intervening and cumberous ecclesiastical ma- 
chinery, Christianity has been made to assert some- 
thing of its primitive aggressive power. It is an 
undeniable fact, that, since the revival of Congre- 
gationalism within the last century or two, a won- 
derful missionary spirit has been awakened among 
the disciples of Christ,^ and the gospel has advanced 
more rapidly and farther over the world than during 
all the intervening centuries since the corruption of 

^ Address before the American Congregational Union, May, 
1854, by Prof. E. A. Park, D. D., p. 45. 

2 "It will be acknowledged," says an Episcopalian writer, 
" that the strength of our brethren, [referring to his brethren of 
other denominations,] In their missionary operations, lies In New 
England, and among the descendants of the Puritans." — Tract 
upon the Position of the Protestant Episcopal Church, p. 14. 

8* 



90 THE CHURCH POLITY . 

the apostolic and primitive form of a chm*ch. In 
the first age of Christianity, when this church polity 
had full sway, the missionary spirit rose high, and 
the gospel spread rapidly over the world ; and now 
when this church polity is again revived, this same 
missionary spuit is again awakened, and once mor'e 
we see the churches engaged in obeying the Re- 
deemer's last great command. 

But this is not the only proof of the singular 
fitness of this system for powerful aggi'essive ac- 
tion. There are certain great evils and sins in the 
world, with which the church is constantly coming 
into conflict ; and when brought to the encounter, 
there are but two courses before her; she must 
either take her stand before them and resist them 
even unto death, if need be, or bend, compromise 
with them, and so receive on her own fair forehead 
the foul stain of their guilt. There are such sins ; 
prevalent sins ; fashionable sins ; systematized sins ; 
interwoven often into the very texture of society, 
into the very fabric of civil government. Now if, 
in the providence of God, a church of Christ is 
placed in such a relation to these sins that she must 
either give her consent and sanction to them, or 
reprobate and resist them, nothing can be plainer 
than her duty. She must wash her hands of those 
sins, whatever they are, and at all costs. And it 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 91 

is in just such an emergency as this, that those 
Christians who have adopted the church polity 
of the Pilgrims are most likely and most prompt 
to do their duty. Not only lias the previous train- 
ing of the men under the system prepared them 
to act independently and manfully in such a case, 
but they have comparatively little temptation to 
swerve from the right. There is nothing about their 
church organization that^will be put in jeopardy by 
the encounter. They are all free, and ready for duty. 
Had they a vast and complicated ecclesiastical 
machinery uniting the churches of their commun- 
ion, with which the sin had become all intertwined, 
they might say, " If we touch the sin, we shall rend 
the church ; " and so, to save their ecclesiastical 
system, they would nourish the sin. But, as mem- 
bers of distinct, local churches, they have no eccle- 
siastical organization whose interests they must so 
carefully consult, before they can obey God. They 
have no such incumbrance weighing them down 
when their heavenly Master is calling them to 
action. They can be influenced by no fear either 
that their course will be reviewed by some high 
church judicatory, which may already have become 
compromised with the sin, and virtually pledged to 
its support. They have nothing above them but con- 
science and God ; and when these are calling them 



92 THE CHURCH POLITY 

to duty, their church polity leaves them perfectly 
free to obey. The independent local church never 
feels the influence of a mighty, overshadowing 
church power breathing down upon it, and stiffen- 
ing all its members so that they dare not stir for 
very fear. You do not hear them constantly and 
servilely appealing to the hook^ the book, and to the 
authoritative decisions of high ecclesiastical judica- 
tories ; nor, in any great question of Christian duty, 
inquiring, first of all, for the limits of their consti- 
tutional power ! The Bible is the only book which 
they honor with the distinctive appellation, The 
Book. The Scriptures are their only and sufficient 
rule of Christian faith and practice, and the author- 
ity of Christ is alone above that of their local 
church. Consequently, they are never cowled down 
into a cringing attitude by an imposing ecclesiastical 
organism. They are never cramped by formality 
or fear, or any of the rigidities of a complicated 
and centralizing church system. When called to 
decide upon a course of action, they can consult con- 
science and the Bible without once thinking of their 
church organization. And in this is disclosed one 
of the greatest excellences of our ecclesiastical 
polity. It accomplishes its own work quietly and 
efficiently, securing to us all the ends of a church, 
and yet never interposes between us and our duty. 



OF THE PILGKIMS. 93 

It has no influences to foster that sectarian spirit 
that leads one to think more of his church than of 
duty or of Christ. 

Nor is this all the proof of the great aggressive 
power of this divine church polity. It is, from its 
very nature, one of the greatest foes on earth to 
all great systematized or legalized sins. Tyrants 
hate it. All forms of despotism and oppression 
gnash their teeth upon it. Take some of its pri- 
mary principles, and apply them to any system of 
wickedness, and contemplate the result. Take, 
for instance, its law of discipline, — that simple 
but imperative law that is virtually discarded by 
other church polities. That law of our Saviom*, 
without any sycophancy or apology, places all the 
members of the church upon the same level, — 
Greek and barbarian, bond and free, master and 
slave, — and makes them all kings and priests unto 
God. Look at the following application, which 
has been aptly made of it to the sin of human 
bondage. " It says to the slave, who has been re- 
fashioned in his Sovereign's image : If thy brother, 
who claims the ownership of thee, shall trespass 
against thee, go and tell him his fault, between 
thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, thou 
hast gained thy brother; but if he will not hear 
thee, then take with thee one or two more of thy 



94 THE CHURCH POLITY 

fellow bondmen ; and if he shall neglect to hear 
them, tell his fault to the church, even if they be 
all his legal property ; and if he neglect to hear 
that church, let him be unto thee as an heathen 
man, and whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall 
be bound in heaven.^ Why has not this scriptural 
church polity gone into every portion of our coun- 
try ? Why is it so much dreaded, and so repeatedly 
and earnestly affirmed to be a good system for New 
England, but not for any other part of the land ? 
Why is it so violently maligned the moment it is 
seen crossing the boundary line of the Eastern 
States and approaching the " peculiar institutions " 
of some other States ? One reason is obvious. No 
scheme of despotism, however strongly barricaded 
by legal enactments, can stand before it. It cuts 
right through our American system of human op- 
pression, and levels it to the ground. At one fell 
sweep it places master and slave side by side, 
brothers in Christ, with the rights of brothers ; and, 
that done, slavery is no more. This systematized 
sin is our country's great and growing peril. Devel- 
oping itself by inherent laws in the stern march 
of history slowly yet inevitably as it does, it some- 

^ Address before the American Congregational Union, May, 
1854, by E. A. Park, D. D. 



OF THE PILGRIMS. 95 

times seems as if our free institutions were already 
doomed. Do we love our country ? Then confront 
this gigantic evil with its true antagonism. Carry 
out into the land, far beyond the borders of New 
England, that divine church polity, which, above 
all others, is fitted to grapple successfully with this 
and every such monster evil." 

5. In the fifth place, the church polity of the 
Pilgrims is peculiarly fitted to promote the spirit- 
uality of Christians. It promotes it in all those 
ways in which, as w^e have seen, it calls them into 
personal and responsible action. It cherishes it, not 
only by this vigorous exercise of it, but also by 
habituating each church-member to stand face to 
face before his God, without any intervening ecclesi- 
asticism ; by intrusting all the members alike with 
the watch and care of souls, and holding them ac- 
countable only to Christ. The pressure of such 
personal responsibilities is eminently fitted to lead 
men to prayer, and a closer walk with God. The 
fact that Christ is understood to be the only head 
of even a local church tends to bring the members 
at once into intimate communion with him. The 
close affinity of this church polity with the deepest 
and truest piety is likewise clearly indicated by the 
fact, that in the great religious reformations that 
have occurred in the history of the church, there 



96 THE CHURCH POLITY 

has usually been plainly discernible a strong ten- 
dency towards this system, if not an actual adop- 
tion of it. Luther himself was at first a Congre- 
gationalist, but afterwards gave up the system from 
fear that all " the poor people " were not well 
enough trained for it. He should have let the sys- 
tem itself have trained the people. This church 
polity is like a plant, that always enriches its own 
soil. Had the great reformer but persevered for a 
short time in the experiment, he would have re- 
mained a Congregation alist. Even in Calvin and 
Knox there can be discerned, at least, a tendency 
towards this form of a church. They both 
advised measures to bring the members of the 
chm-ch into responsible action as a means of their 
spu'itual improvement. The close affinity of this 
system with the spirit of missions has already 
been noticed. It quickens the Christian's sympa- 
thy with his Redeemer. It cherishes the love of 
souls. One of the leading objects of the Pilgrims 
in coming to this countiy was to convert the heathen 
to Christ; and from the days of Eliot to our own, 
Congregationalism has ever been foremost in the 
sacred work of missions. The tendency of this 
form of a church to promote the spirituality of its 
members is also strikingly illustrated by its natural 
alliance with revivals of religion. New England, 



OP THE PILGRIMS. 97 

the great seat of Congregationalism, has been em- 
phatically the land of revivals. And wherever this 
divine ecclesiastical polity has been adopted, it has 
shown a strong tendency to put to rout all formality 
and spiritual deadness, and bring men into spiritual 
life. 

Now it is this church polity, with all these its 
undeniable excellences; its peculiar fitness to ele- 
vate the masses of the people, and thus prepare 
them for the freest, highest form of civil govern- 
ment ; its surpassing adaptedness to the present 
state of the church and the world, working with 
the least possible friction, and yet with the greatest 
efficiency ; simple, quiet, unostentatious in itself, 
and yet terrible in its aggressive action ; at the same 
time having the closest affinity with the deepest, 
truest piety ; — it is this living-, divine church ; the 
single, local church of the Pilgrims ; the church of 
Christ and the apostles ; with all its unquestionable 
and preeminent excellences, that I ask you to-day 
to give to your country. I confidently believe, that 
ultimately, in the history of this world's redemp- 
tion, this form of a church will become universally 
prevalent. By its origin, its nature, and facts in its 
history already attesting its marvellous capabilities, 
I am fully persuaded that it is the only form of a 
church in which Christianity can displace sectarian- 
9 



98 THE CHURCH POLITY, ETC. 

ism, triumph over every sin, and so bring on the 
world's complete evangelization. All hail to the 
coming time in our own country, when the mighty 
power of this simple but divine system shall be 
working in all the borders of our land ; in the east 
and in the west, in the north and in the south ; 
sending out into the community a thousand quicken- 
ing influences ; gi'appling fearlessly with all the sins 
of the land, and holding on in the struggle until 
the people shout the paean of her victory! All 
hail to that yet further future in the world, when 
the disciples of one Lord shall no longer be divided 
up into warring sects, fenced around with high, 
frowning, denominational walls ; when we shall no 
more hear of the Congregational Church, the Pres- 
byterian Church, the Episcopal Church, the Metho- 
dist Church, the Baptist Church, but when all shall 
be simple, local churches, each distinct and complete 
in itself, all standing upon the same broad level of 
belief and fellowship, — one Lord, one faith, one 
baptism ! All hail to that glorious future, the. 
world's millennium ! 



APPENDIX 



NOTE A. 



Many Congregational ministers in New England, during 
the last quarter of a century, have never for once advo- 
cated their own church polity in their public ministrations ; 
and some few there are, indeed, who, when they have made 
any reference to the subject either in preaching or in 
writing, have done so in a half apologetic strain, and have 
been especially particular to deprecate all earnest advocacy 
of Congregationalism as of divine authority. Take the 
following as a fair illustration : " With regard to the ap- 
pointment of any special form of church government, it 
would seem that there is a wise silence in the New Testa- 
ment. The genius of Christianity forbids an adherence to 
any form of ecclesiastical order as essential to the existence 
of a church of Christ. Our preference for the Congrega- 
tional form of church government is not properly founded 
on any prescriptions in the New Testament, but on our 
convictions that this form is most accordant with the genius 
of Christianity and of republican institutions. But so 
surely as we insist on Congregationalism as having any 
'divine right' or authority, and we seek to propagate Con- 
gregationalism with such convictions, we are as surely High- 



100 APPENDIX. 

Churclimen and Puseyites as can anywhere be found. At 
the same time we may believe that the Congregational fonn 
of government is nearer to the spirit of the New Testament 
than any other." The position assumed here is, that Christ 
and the apostles left to Christians no specific form of church 
government, and that therefore no one form, properly speak- 
ing, is any more scriptural than any other. Popery, Epis- 
copacy, Methodism, Presbyterianism, as systems of church 
government, are as truly of divine authority as Congrega- 
tionalism ; that is, no system can be defended on this 
ground. Congregationalism, then, if advocated at all, must 
be advocated not on the ground of its being scriptural or of 
divine authority, but on the ground of expediency. 

This is the Erastian view. It is the position frequently 
assumed by the advocates of centralized systems of church 
government. They adojit this as an easy mode of getting 
rid of the scriptural argument, of which they are aware they 
can make nothing in their favor, and of clearing the way 
for a most strenuous defence of their own systems on other 
than scriptural grounds. But when a Congregationalist 
assumes this position, it will generally be found, as a matter 
of fact, that he does it, not to prepare the way for the de- 
fence of his own ecclesiastical polity, but rather as an apol- 
ogy for holding to it loosely, and for being ready, at any 
moment when circumstances may require it, to surrender it 
for some other system. 

It is instructive to compare this modern style of remarking 
upon Congregationalism, an example of which is given 
above, with the manner of discourse upon this subject 
formerly in vogue among Congregational ministers. It 
shows what a change has taken j)lace in this regard, and 
how insipid such a belief, and such a strain of remark upon 
our church polity, are, in comparison with the manly faith 



APPENDIX. 101 

and practice of the New England fathers, and of the Eng- 
lish advocates of our church polity. Let any one read the 
above denial that Congregationalism has any divine right 
or scriptural authority, and then turn to John Cotton and 
hear him say of this same church polity, that " it was insti- 
tuted and practised in the first ages of Christianity, and our 
Saviour himself is the true author of this first ecclesiastical 
state of the church ; " or to Cotton Mather, and hear him 
affirm that " we have a platform left us that is according 
to the word of our gracious Lord;" or to the pages of 
John Robinson, and see how he "vindicated, cleared, and 
defended it, on scriptural grounds, and by victorious ar- 
gument," and he will be convinced that a great change, in 
this respect, has gradually come over the ministry of our de- 
nomination. John Owen, advocating the divine authority 
of Congregationalism, says that " Christ alone is the author, 
institutor, and appointer, in a way of authority and legisla- 
tion, of the gospel church-state, its order, rule, and worship 
with all things constantly and perpetually belonging there- 
unto, or necessary to be observed therein. What is not so 
is of men, and not from heaven." -^ This same divine has 
one chapter with the caption, " Congregational churches 
alone suited unto the ends of Christ in the institution of his 
church ; " and another with the caption, " No other church- 
state of divine institution." The famous book of John Wise, 
which is the legal accredited exposition of the Cambridge 
platform, makes no apology for defending Congregation- 
alism on the ground of its divine authority, as well as on 
that of its conformity to " the light of nature." The Con- 
gregationalists of that day in New England did not hesitate 
to advocate their own church polity boldly and earnestly 
even in opposition to Presbyterianism. " An aristocracy," 



Owen's Works, Vol. XV. p. 24.^^^t %clf^Oo/ Qf % 

1 N.'^ ' 






102 APPENDIX. 

says John Wise, " is a dangerous constitution in the church 
of Christ; as it possesses the presbytery of all church 
power. What has been observed sufficiently evinces it. 
And not only so, but from the nature of the constitution, 
for it has no more barrier to it against the ambition, in- 
sults, and arbitrary measures of men, than an absolute 
monarchy."^ President Oakes, the fourth president of 
Harvard College, in an election sermon, as quoted by John 
Wise, says : " I profess that I look upon the discovery and 
settlement of the Congregational way, as the boon, the gra- 
tuity, the largeness, of divine bounty, which the Lord gra- 
ciously bestowed on this people, that followed him into this 
wilderness, and who were separated from their brethren. 
Those good jieople who came over had more love, zeal, and 
affectionate desire of communion with God, in pure worship 
and ordinances, and did more in order to it, than others ; 
and the Lord did more for them than for any people in the 
world, in showing them the pattern of his house, and the 
-truer scriptural way of church government and administra- 
■tions. God was certainly in a more than ordinary way 
present with his servants, in laying of our foundations ; 
and in settling church order, according to the will and 
appointment of Christ. Consider what will be the sad 
issue of revolting from the way fixed on to one extreme or 
to another, whether it be to Presbyterianism or to Brown- 
ism." 2 

Nor has such an outspoken and manly advocacy of the 
church pohty of the apostles and primitive Christians 
ceased to be heard in the pulpits of New England until 
within a comparatively few years. As late as the time of 
Dr. Emmons, we have an example of the defence of Con- 

1 Vindication of the Government of New England Churches, p. 39. 

2 Vindication of the Government of New England Churches, p. 19. 



APPENDIX. 103 

gregationalism that would have sounded familiar to the 
people of earlier New England history. " Every mode of 
church government," says Dr. Emmons, "is destructive of 
the rights and liberties of every Christian church except 
strict Congregationalism. Presbyterianism is destructive of 
the independence of every Christian church, and robs it of 
all the power and authority which Christ has given it. No 
Presbyterian church has a right to invite a candidate to 
preach among them, without the consent of the presbytery. 
And after they have invited him and are willing to settle 
him, they cannot get him ordained without the consent of 
the presbytery. And if he should be corrupt in sentiment or 
practice, they could not discipline him according to the steps 
that Christ has pointed out. He would first ajDpeal to the 
presbytery, and if they should condemn him, he would 
appeal to the synod ; and if they should condemn him, he 
could appeal to the general assembly, which might be hun- 
dreds of miles from his people ; and if they should justify 
him, his people could have no relief. It is easy to see that 
this mode of church government is destructive to the rights 
of any particular church. So is Episcopalianism. An 
Episcopalian church has no independence ; the government 
of it is in the hands of archbishops, bishops, and other 
inferior clergy. You know that all the Protestant world 
have loudly complained, and justly, of the ecclesiastical 
tyranny of the church of Pome, which has destroyed the 
independence of all the churches of the popish religion. 
Every mode of church government except strict Congrega- 
tionalism is hostile to that perfect platform of church gov- 
ernment which Christ has given us in the eighteenth of 
Matthew, and is more or less tyrannical. These human 
hierarchies, which have been the source of immense evils in 
the Christian world, ought to be destroyed ; and they will 
undoubtedly be destroyed in the time of the millennium. 



104 APPENDIX. 

They are the bulwarks of error, delusion, and every species 
of moral corruption, and must be purged out of the Christian 
world before the church can become universally pure, and 
flourish. We have long been praying for the downfall of 
unchristian power and tyranny in the church of Rome ; and 
we ought to pray for the downfall of every degree of that 
unchristian power in every other church in the world." 

. . . And now please to remember, that your peace, 
purity, and edification unitedly bind you, to stand fast in 
the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free ; and main- 
tain your original Congregational principles in opposition to 
every other mode of church government; and especially 
against Presbyterianism, which so many ministers through- 
out the United States are so zealously engaged to promote. 
If they should tell you that Christ has not instituted any par- 
ticular form of church government, refer them to the 
eighteenth of Matthew, which ouglit to silence them. But 
if they deny that any platform of government is there insti- 
tuted, ask them to show you the passage or the passages in 
the New Testament in which Christians are required to 
exercise any kind of ecclesiastical authority or discipline 
over one another. Ko man can tell. All who depart from 
Christ's platform of church government make one of their 
own, which must be unscrii^tural, unreasonable, and tyranni- 
cal. This has been, for ages, confirmed by all the persecu- 
tions to which Christians have been subjected. All perse- 
cutions have originated from ecclesiastical tyranny. But it 
is impossible for persecution to arise in strictly Congre- 
gational churches. They inflict no civil penalties on 
delinquents. Their discipline terminates in excommunica- 
tion. Maintain Congregational discipline, and you ai-e safe, 
but not otherwise." ^ 

1 Emmons's Works, Vol. V. pp. 455, 457. 



APPENDIX. 105 

It is very obvious, that if this nation is ever to inherit to 
any great degree the noble character and principles of the 
Pilgrims, Congregationalists must cease apologizing for the 
church polity of those godly men. If Christianity, disen- 
thralled from human forms and inventions, is ever to exert 
its primitive power upon this great people, developing and 
perpetuating institutions more congenial with itself, and 
more mighty in their ennobling influences than the world 
has yet seen, Congregational ministers must cease begging 
pardon of their hearers and the world for having adopted 
the church polity of the apostles and the primitive Chris- 
tians. At the present time there are unmistakable indica- 
tions of a rapid return to the practice of the New England 
fathers in a bold and uncompromising defence of Congrega- 
tionalism, not in a sectarian spirit, we trust, but from true 
love to Christ, and to the only form of a church which he 
has left to his people. To every thoughtful mind this 
change is one of the most marked features of the age, and 
one of the most hopeful for the maintenance of a pure and 
unfettered Christianity, and for the perpetuity of our civil 
institutions. The following is an illustration of the style 
of thought that is now becoming current in our denomina- 
tion : — 

" Are we to expect the perpetuity of centralization as an 
element of Protestantism ? Why should we expect it ? 
Protestantism has indeed made the Bible free, and left 
every Christian free to interpret it. But on which page of 
the Bible is there the remotest hint of a centralized church 
government, whether of the Presbyterian or Episcopal 
form ? As we have already said, the Bible affords no evi- 
dence that such a conception had entered any man's mind 
in the apostolic age. How then does a free Bible tend to 
promote church centralization ? On the contrary, it pre- 
sents us the church under apostolic guidance, with no trace 
of centralization upon it. 



106 APPENDIX. 

" Is it said the experience of the church has demonstrated 
the necessity of such centralization beyond reasonable doubt 
or controversy ? Where is that demonstration ? In what 
ages of church history has it been wrought out ? "Was it in 
the Ancient Church, when each step towards centrahzation 
was a step towards the apostasy ? Was it in the medieval 
Church, when centralized church power wore out the 
patience of the saints for a thousand years ? Or has this 
demonstration been wrought out since the Reformation, dur- 
ing which period, it is obvious, to any thoughtful reader of 
history, that centralized church government exists not from 
any past or present experience of its necessity, but as the 
embodiment of an idea derived from the past, and tena- 
ciously cherished as sacred ? And if experience has fur- 
nished any proof of its necessity or utility, it is in the work- 
ing of the very ecclesiastical systems which we now see 
around us. And in order to succeed in the argument, the 
advocates of centrahzation must address themselves to a 
comparison of the resuhs of their several systems with those 
of the localism of the apostolic age, of English and Scotch 
Independency, and of our own New England churches. 
We shall not shrink from any conclusions to which such an 
investigation will be likely to conduct." 

" We may argue as we please for the beneficial influence 
of sects, their obvious bhghting and blasting effects are fill- 
in o- the hearts of thousands of the most devout and pious 
Christians with unutterable sorrow. And it is a sorrow 
which springs up from the deepest fountams of Christian 
love, and which no argument, however ingenious, can com- * 
fort. We even deny that the amount of effort and individ- 
ual self-sacrifice for objects nominally religious are at all 
increased by the existence of sects. Where in this land 
will you find a HberaHty to the cause of missions equalHng 



APPENDIX. 107 

that of the New England churches to the American Foreign 
and Home Missionary Societies ? And yet it is certain, that 
these contributions are not stimulated by denominational 
zeal. They are the product of no spirit of mere denomina- 
tional propagandism, 

" The foundations and endowments of the New England 
colleges have not come from denominational zeal ; and he 
sadly misunderstands New England who supposes that they 
have. And yet, where else on our continent hath an equal 
liberality to the cause of learning been displayed ? Indeed, 
he seems to us beside himself who imagines, that had New 
England presented throughout her history the same aspect 
of denominationalism which our country as a whole now 
presents, her efficiency in promoting religious interests would 
not have been greatly less than it has been. 

" We are ready, therefore, to declare our conviction, .... 
that this conflict of sects, each aiming to extend its jurisdiction 
over the greatest possible numbers, and soliciting the allegi- 
ance of the same individuals, like all other conflicts, is a 
state of transition, and not of rest ; and, therefore, in the 
nature of things, is transient, and while it lasts is fatally 
contradictory to that unity of his disciples for which our 
Lord prayed, and for which every Christian in every age 
must pray. We are persuaded that the ' sect system ' is 
not the ultimate destiny of Protestantism in a country where 
it enjoys freedom of development. 

" We believe, therefore, that the independence of the local 
church is the result towards which the principles of the 
Reformation steadily tend, and in which the church, disen- 
thralled from all the forms and modifications of centralized 
church power, will at last find rest ; in doctrine, purely and 
simply evangelical ; in government, local, and recognizing 
the full equality of the Christian brotherhood ; in ceremonies, 
receiving none but those appointed in the Divine Word, and 



108 APPENDIX. 

granting all that liberty of opinion in respect to these wliich 
experience has shown to be necessary to accommodate the 
diversities of judgment hkely to arise among Christian men 
honestly endeavoring to interpret the Sacred Oracles. 

" For such a system we claim that it is but a reproduction 
of the church order of the apostles, which was in a great 
measure lost in the great antichristian apostasy ; that while 
it gives opportunity for the full development of individual 
activity and efficiency, it more successfully provides than 
any other system has ever done for the great social wants 
of the church of Christ, so that its efficacy in perpetuating 
the gospel at home by permanent institutions, and sending 
it abroad by a world-wide spirit of missions, is greater than 
that of any other ecclesiastical system which has existed 
since the apostolic age." ^ 

It is a cheering fact, that such sentiments as these now 
meet with a ready response from the hearts of increasing 
multitudes in our country. They have been, and are des- 
tined to be, the sentiments of the most thoughtful, the holi- 
est, and the most unsectarian, of men. There is getting to 
be too much light abroad upon this subject for any recreant 
son of the Pilgrims safely to denounce those holy, self-deny- 
ing fathers of New England as "High-Churchmen and 
Puseyites," because they defended their church polity " with 
victorious argument," on the ground of its scripturalness and 
divine authority. 



XOTE B. 



The original word, translated to ordain, in Acts 14: 23, 
Dr. Robinson, in his Greek Lexicon, says, means " to stretch 

1 The New Englander, November, 1857, pp. 547-549. 



APPENDIX. 109 

out the hand, to hold up the hand, as in voting ; hence to 
vote, to give one's vote, by holding up the hand. In the New 
Testament, to choose hy vote, to appoint" But in no case 
does the word mean to ordain. The only question, then, at 
issue with regard to the meaning of Acts 14 : 23 is, whether 
the apostles appointed the elders by a popular election, or 
by electing them themselves. The great preponderance of 
the best authorities is in favor of the opinion that the elec- 
tion was strictly popular. It is so understood by Calvin, 
Beza, Erasmus, Owen, Doddridge, Coleman, and many 
others. " This conclusion," says Dr. Lyman Coleman, " is 
sustained by the most approved authorities. According to 
Suicer, the primary and appropriate signification of the term 
is to denote an election made by the uplifting of the hand, 
and particularly denotes the election of a bishop by vote. 
' In this sense,' he adds, ' it continued for a long time to be 
used in the church, denoting, not an ordination or consecra- 
tion, but an election.' Grotius, Meyer, and De "Wette so 
interpret the passage, to say nothing of Beza, Bohmer, 
Rothe, and others. 

" To the same effect is also the following extract from Tin- 
dal. ' We read only of the apostles, constituting elders hy 
the suffrages of the people, Acts 14 : 23, which, as it is the 
genuine signification of the Greek word, iEiqOTOvri6avzEgy 
so it is accordingly interpreted by Erasmus, Beza, Diodati,. 
and those who translated the Swiss, French, Italian, Bel-- 
gic, and even English Bibles, till the Episcopal correction, 
which leaves out the words hy election, as well as the mar- 
ginal notes, which affirm that the apostles did not thrust- 
pastors into the church through a lordly su^Dcriority, hut 
chose and placed them there hy the voice of the congregation.^ 
Tyndale's translation is as follows: 'And when they had^ 
ordened them seniours by eleccion, in every congregacion, . 
10 



110 APPENDIX. 

after they had prejde and fasted, they commennd them to 
God, on whom they beleved.' " ^ 

A few modern biblical scholars, however, as, for instance, 
Professor H. B. Hackett and Dr. Samuel Davidson, main- 
tain that nothing more can be positively learned from the 
passage in Acts 14: 23 than that the apostles themselves 
appointed the elders. Still, according to these authorities, 
there was undoubtedly a concurrent appointment. " One 
thing is clear to the candid inquirer," says Dr. Davidson, 
"that Paul and Barnabas appointed the elders in ques- 
tion." But in. answer to the question, Did they make this 
appointment without the concurrence of the churches them- 
selves? he replies: "We think not. The spirit of similar 
transactions, and the general tenor of the New Testament, 
forbid the supposition. Even in appointing an apostle, the 
company of the believers took a prominent part. The 
apostles did not complete their own number of themselves. 
The popular will was consulted. So, too, in the case of 
deacons. Hence it may be fairly inferred that the appoint- 
ment of elders, here recorded, was not made contrary to the 
wish of the disciples. It is impossible to discover whether 
the people signified their wishes to Paul and Barnabas, by 
pointing out to them individuals whom they judged to be 
qualified for office; or whether the two did, in the first 
instance, constitute and set over the disciples Christians 
known to themselves, the people wisely concurring in the 
measure adopted for their edification by men divinely au- 
thorized to collect and organize Christian communities. In 
either case, the people's wishes were not contraven^ed. 
Whether the initiative act originated with the members or 
the two apostles, we do not undertake to decide. One 
thing alone must be maintained, that all was done with the 

1 See Primitive Church, by Dr. Lyman Coleman, p. 63. 



APPENDIX. Ill 



full approval of the brethren."^ He afterwards affirms, 
that " there is even a probabihty that the disciples had 
chiefly to do with their election." Neander likewise says : 
" The brethren chose their own officers from among them- 
selves ; or if, in the first organization of the churches, their 
officers were appointed by the apostles, it was with the ap- 
probation of the members of the same."^ This learned 
historian also repeatedly affii-ms that the apostles distinctly 
taught that the sovereignty under Christ was exclusively in 
the hands of the brotherhood of the local church. Conse- 
quently, whoever, in the first instance, made the nomination 
or appointment of a church officer, it must have been done 
subject to the final action of the church. The veto power 
was not with any church officer or judicatory, but with the 
brethren of the church. 



NOTE C. 



Undoubtedly, the purer Congregationalism, or the nearer 
it is kept to the primitive model of church government, the 
more efficient it will be in the maintenance and dissemina- 
tion of a living Christianity. It is possible that our Con- 
gregationalism has lost something of its power by being 
burdened with a few things, which do not necessarily belong 
to it as a system. In this view it is not uninstructive to see 
how a foreign divine, who has bestowed much study upon 
the ecclesiastical polity of the New Testament, and is him- 
self a Congregationalist, looks upon American Congrega- 
tionalism. "In reference to councils and associations," says 
Dr. Samuel Davidson, " our opinion is, that, if it be deemed 

1 Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament, by Samuel Davidson, 
D. D., pp. 161, 162. 
^ Primitive Church, by Dr. Coleman, Introduction, p. 19. 



112 APPENDIX. 

desirable to have them at all, they should be sparingly sum- 
moned, and only in cases of great difficulty; that duties 
should not be assigned to them which can as well be man- 
aged otherwise ; and that they should lay no restraint on the 
internal and inalienable liberties of the individual churches. 
We repeat our assertion, that they are too frequently called 
by the Congregationalists of New England ; and that by 
practice, matters have come to be assigned them which need 
not and ought not to be so transferred. Thus they license 
men to preach the gospel ; ordain those called to be pastors ; 
deliberate on the removal of a minister from one place to 
another, and depose a pastor from his office. These and 
other thin^i^s should not be consi;?ned to councils or associa- 
tions, because they may be transacted equally well by the 
churches themselves in their individual capacity, each of 
which is competent to manage its own affairs. The cases 
which justify the calling of a council should be doubtful and 
difficult, deeply affecting the purity of a church in doctrine 
and discipline, or the rights of parties belonging to it. 

" As to standing councils or consociatio7is, they are exposed 
to so many objections that they ought to be discarded. For 
their undoubted tendency is to invite or encourage cases of 
appeal, to foster elements of strife, and to prepare the 
way for abridgment of the liberties rightfully belonging to 
every Christian church. We object to them as injurious to 
the general interests of truth and freedom. We should not 
wish to see them erected. Far distant be the day when the 
consociations of Connecticut shall appear in the mother 
country among our Congregational churches ! Unlike the 
stated associations formed among us in most counties, they 
end to Presbyterianism." •^ 

1 Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testamentj by Dr. S. Davidson. 
Second Edition, pp. 270^ 271. 



APPENDIX. 113 

Again this author remarks : " We know that in cases 
of dispute between pastor and people, it is common among 
American Congregationalists to summon mutual or ex 
parte councils, to examine, hear evidence, and vote ac- 
cordingly ; but although their decision be obligatory on the 
parties no farther than the parties themselves consent, the 
propriety of the step is exceedingly questionable. To say 
the least, it is wholly unnecessary. A church has power, ac- 
cording to the general principles on which it is organized, to 
adjust and perform every act of discipline, whether it con- 
cerns pastors or members, as American Congregationalists 
themselves freely admit. To erect, therefore, any other 
tribunal for the occasion, is perfectly arbitrary and useless ; 
virtually implying, on the part of those who summon it, a 
distrust in the sufficiency, or defect in the luminousness, of 
the comprehensive code by which all the affairs of Christian 
men must be ultimately determined. We disapprove of 
such councils. It is better to keep the institutions of Christ 
simple, as they appear in the New Testament. Better is it 
to allow a church the exercise of its own rights fully, with- 
out sanctioning so much as the appearance of incomplete- 
ness. The utihty of the proceeding in question is not clear, 
while the superfluousness of it is apparent. Hence it should 
not be resorted to." -^ 

It should be said in justification of our custom of li- 
censing candidates for the ministry, that a license from an 
association is simply a recommendation of the candidate 
from so many ministers to the churches. They simply 
advise the churches to hear him preach. The license has 
no ecclesiastical authority whatever, and no force except 
what it derives from the character and influence of the men 

1 Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament, by Dr. Davidson. 
Second Edition, p. 320. 

10* 



114 APPENDIX. 

who gave it. TVith regard to the action of ordaining and 
dismissing, and mutual and ex parte councils, it is unques- 
tionably true that they often assume authority which they 
do not possess. The style of language which they use in 
their results is often exceedingly objectionable. When 
called, for instance, to advise a church with regard to dis- 
missing its minister, the council not unfrequently takes the 
business entirely into its own hands, and, after hearing a 
representation of the case, of its own authority pronounces 
the minister dismissed. " And hereby," they say, " he is 
dismissed'' Other assumptions of authority, equally glaring 
and equally inconsistent with the fundamental principles of 
Congregationalism, are frequently made by councils ; and 
there are reasons of the most imperative nature why every 
practice of this kind should be at once corrected. The 
brethren of every local church should understand that the 
sovereignty under Christ, and all the responsibilities that 
attach to that sovereignty, are entirely with themselves; 
and also that the sovereignty of the local church is indivis- 
ible and incommunicable; that it cannot even be shared, 
without occasioning its destruction, with any officer or judi- 
catory above the church. And an ecclesiastical council 
should always make the impression, both by their demeanor 
and their language, that their work is simply advisory or 
persuasive, or, as in the case of their actually ordaining a 
minister, that they act simply as the servants of the church, 
performing the work of its members for them, and only at 
their request. It should not only be understood, but it 
should be more distinctly and formally acknowledged than 
it usually is, both by the ordaining council and the members 
of the church, that the ordaining power is vested in the 
church, and not in the council. It would also frequently be 
a great gain to the disciplinary power of a church, often 
preventing cases of prolonged and troublesome discipline, 



APPENDIX. 115 

if all tlie members, and especially the erring brother, 
distinctly understood that the final action of the church 
upon his case will be decisive ; unless the church, in its own 
sovereignty, shall see fit to take the advice of other churches. 
This last course may sometimes show a spirit of candor, and 
a commendable desire to do justly ; still it is the right of a 
church, after it has once passed a vote excommunicating an 
erring member, from that time forth to " let him he a heathen 
man and a publican," and that letting him he will often save 
a church from the most prolonged and disastrous difficulties. 
The sovereignty of the local church is as essential to 
Congregationalism as to Independency, and any thing which 
is destructive of that principle of church }3ohty is destructive 
of Congregationalism. The distinction between Indepen- 
dency and Congregationalism is not that Independency says 
that ecclesiastical councils shall not be employed, while Con- 
gregationalism says that they shall be employed, in certain 
cases ; but it is rather this, that according to Independency 
ecclesiastical councils ought not to be employed, while ac- 
cording to Congregationalism they may rightfully be em- 
ployed sometimes to advise or to assist, because such a use of 
them is not in the least degree destructive of the sovereignty 
of the local church ; and, if they may rightfully be employed, 
it is expedient to employ them in certain cases, not only for 
the sake of the assistance thus obtained, but also because 
it is Christian courtesy, and tends to promote the good order 
and the fellowship of the churches. But to admit that 
ecclesiastical councils have power or authority to do any thing 
which a local church has no power or authority to do, is de- 
structive of one of the essential principles of Congrega- 
tionalism, the sovereignty of each church. To admit, for 
instance, that a local church has no power or right, without 
an ecclesiastical council, to ordain its own minister or to 
dismiss him even though both the church and the minister 
desire the separation and agree to it, is to admit that a coun- 



116 APPENDIX. 

cil has an ecclesiastical authority higher than that of the 
local church. Such an admission is a surrender of Congre- 
gationalism. It breaks down at once the most important 
distinction between the church polity of the primitive Chris- 
tians and the centralized and despotic forms of church gov- 
ernment. If councils are absolutely necessary, it would be 
as well, nay better, to have 5^a72c?m^ councils or presbyteries; 
and if we should have presbyteries we should have synods, 
and so on. We must, at all hazards, maintain the sovereignty, 
under Christ, of the local church, and also its absolute com- 
pleteness as an ecclesiastical body, or, in other words, its 
competency to transact all ecclesiastical business. A church 
can, according to the principles of Congregationalism, ordain 
its own minister; and this was the practice among the earlier 
Congregational churches of New England. A church can, 
according to the principles of Congregationalism, dismiss its 
minister upon mutual agreement between themselves and 
him, or without such agreement, if he is morally unworthy 
of his place. But while Congregationalism strenuously main- 
tains this right of individual churches as absolutely neces- 
sary to their sovereignty, it is also Congregational and 
advisable, always, when it can be done, to ask for the advice 
of other churches, both in ordaining and in dismissing a 
minister. 

We cannot refrain here from venturing the suggestion, 
that it would serve to keep more prominently in the minds 
of both the ministers and the members of our churches the 
great fact of the sovereignty of each local church, if it was 
the custom for the church asking advice always to take 
formal action upon the question submitted, after having 
received the advice of the council. Let the action of the 
church be consistent with the language of the letter missive. 
If that asks for advice, let the church meet and receive the 
advice, and take formal action upon it. And always, unless 
by the letter missive, or in some other way the church par- 



APPENDIX. 117 

ticularly directs otherwise, let the final action be the action 
of the church, and not of the counciL The influence of 
such a practice would in various ways be healthful. It 
would forcibly remind both the council and the church of 
their relative positions. It would prevent many uninten- 
tional, and perhaps some intentional, violations of the first 
principles of Congregationalism. 



NOTE D. 

History furnishes numerous illustrations of the tendency 
of centralized systems of church government to become 
more and more centralized. Not only do these systems 
often give to individuals who are educated under their in- 
fluence a craving for a still more despotic government, and 
so send them on in advance from one church to another, 
until they reach the church of absolute despotism ; but these 
systems themselves we often see gradually changing and 
moving on in the same direction. Does a church organize 
itself partly after the Presbyterian and partly after the 
Congregational model, the tendency is not towards Congre- 
gationalism, but towards Presbyterianism. Is a Presbyte- 
rian church of the United States of America organized, dis- 
carding, under the influence of certain Congregational ele- 
ments in it, some of the features of Presbyterianism, as for 
instance its denominational boards, the tendency is not to- 
wards a more perfect Independency, but towards a more in- 
tense Presbyterianism. One degree of centralization in 
church government begets another degree, and that still 
another, and so on ; the change is seldom in the opposite 
direction, except under the influence of religious reformation. 

" It is well known," says Dr. Coleman, " that the intro- 
duction of Episcopacy into this country gave rise to a long 



118 APPENDIX. 

and bitter controversj. The objection, made from within 
the Episcopal churches as well as from without, was, that 
its form of government is anti-republican, and opposed to 
the spirit of our free institutions. The House of Burgesses 
in Virginia, composed chiefly of Episcopalians, declared 
their abhorrence of bishops, unless at the distance of three 
thousand miles, and denounced 'the plan of introducing 
them, in the most unexceptionable form, on this side of the 
Atlantic, as a pernicious project.' 

" When, at last. Episcopacy was introduced, it was only 
by a compromise, — the Episcopalian churches consenting to 
submit to diocesan Episcopacy only in a form greatly 
modified, and divested of its most obnoxious features. To 
the exclusion of the laity from a free and full participation 
in the affairs of the government, they would not for a mo- 
ment submit. Such, according to Bishop White, was the 
prejudice of Episcopalians, 'against the name, and much 
more against the office of a bishop, that, but for the intro- 
duction of the laity into the government of the church, no 
general organization would probably have been formed.' 
Accordingly, the people were allowed freely to choose their 
own pastors, and to have a full representation in all their 
courts. This American Episcopacy was so modified, and 
the prelatical powers of the bishop so restricted by the 
checks and balances of republican principles, that the 
English prelates, on the other hand, were reluctant to 
confer the Episcopate upon Bishop White, alleging that he 
' entertained a design to set up Episcopacy on the ground 
oi preshyterial and lay authority.'' 

" Such was American Episcopacy at first, — qualified as 
much as possible, by the infusion of popular principles, to 
restrain the arbitrary powers of the bishop. But what now 
has this same Episcopacy become ? What now the powers 
of the bishop, compared with what they then were ? He 



APPENDIX. 119 

possesses power almost as arbitrary as that of an Eastern 
despot ; and assumes to rule by an authority independent of 
the will of his subjects. The bishops are permanent and 
irresponsible monarchs, restrained by no judicial tribunal. 
The house of bishops admit no order of the inferior clergy 
to their general convention. They ordain, depose, and 
restore to the ministry at pleasure whom they will ; ' so 
that a Puseyite bishop may fill the church with impenitent 
and unconverted men.' He can prevent any congregation 
from settling the minister of their choice, or displace one 
at bis will, and may, 'upon probable cause,' forbid any 
clergyman from another diocese to officiate in his own. 
Such is the fearful nature of those powers which are now 
intrusted to this spiritual despot in our free republic. 

" And yet, as if all this ominous accumulation of Episco- 
pal prerogatives were not enough, the claims of the bishops 
are still pressed higher and higher. The house of bishops, 
w^ith all its powers, has been superinduced upon the general 
convention since its establishment in America. Now these 
privileged hierarchs can only be tried bi/ themselves ; that is, 
if a president be guilty of any crime or misdemeanor wdiat- 
ever, he must be impeached and tried by a jury of presi- 
dents alone ; a governor by a jury of governors. In one 
convention, the bishop lately claimed and exercised the pre- 
rogative of adjusting the roll of the members, denying to 
them the right of all deliberative assemblies, — that of 
deciding upon the qualifications of their own members ; and 
the same convention, ' by a vote of nearly three to one,' 
meekly acquiesced in this claim of their prelate. Another 
convention provides that its proceedings ' shall not be open 
to the public.' It gives to the bishop an absolute veto upon 
all theii' acts ; and, to crown the w^hole, makes him ' the 
judge in all ecclesiastical trials.' 



120 APPENDIX. 

" Consider, now, this enormous extension of the Episcopal 
power in this enlightened age, in this free republic, — this 
monstrous spiritual despotism imposed upon a people jeal- 
ous above all men of their rights, and prompt to repel every 
invasion of them ; — contemplate such a people, under such 
circumstances, with scarcely a feeble note of remonstrance 
bowing themselves down to this hierarchal supremacy, and 
shall we wonder at the early rise of a mild and compara- 
tively unformed Episcopacy? Shall we marvel at the 
gradual extension of its influence over feeble churches, 
dependent for their support and protection ? Why should 
this be thought a thing incredible, in view of what is trans- 
piring in the midst of us ? " ^ 

Such facts as these, of which the history of centralization 
in church government is full, are a loud warning to Congre- 
gationalists to maintain, at all costs and in all their integrity, 
the principles of their free and divine church polity; and 
never, under any circumstances, to compromise them with 
the first degree of centralization. It was by this process of 
gradually yielding up these principles, beginning with the 
slightest possible surrender of them, that the first churches, 
those left by the apostles and primitive Christians, lost 
their divine form and power, passing on from one degree 
of centralization and corruption to another, until finally 
they ended in all the abominations and the unparalleled 
despotism of Rome. A fearful responsibility is rest- 
ing upon the Congregationalists of the present age, and 
especially upon those of this country. A world's interests 
are in the issue. And it is due to the great Author of 
their church polity, — it is due to all the coming ages of the 
world, that they be found faithful to their trust. 

1 Primitive Church, pp. 263-266. 



APPENDIX. 121 



NOTE E. 



The more candid and intelligent Episcopalians even 
admit that the first Christian churches were, in government, 
entirely independent of each other ; and that there were 
only two kinds of church officers, presbyters or ministers 
and deacons, there being no distinction between a presbyter 
and a bishop. Dr. Coleman cites the following Episcopahan 
authorities : " At first," says the learned Dr. Barrow, " every 
church was settled apart under its own bishop and presby- 
ters, so as independently and separately to manage its own 
concerns. Each was governed by its own head, and had its 
own laws." ^ " The subordinate government," says Riddle, 
" of each particular church, was vested in itself ; that is to 
say, the whole body elected its ministers and officers, and 
were consulted concerning all matters of importance. All 
churches were independent of each other, but were united 
by the bonds of holy charity, sympathy, and friendship." '^ 
" Though there was one Lord, one faith, one baptism," says 
Archbishop Whately, " yet they were each a distinct, inde- 
pendent community on earth, united by the eommon princi- 
ples on which they were founded by their mutual agreement, 
affection, and respect ; but not having any one recognized 
head on earth, or acknowledging any sovereignty of one of 
those societies over others. Each bishop originally pre- 
sided over one entire church." ^ " Bingham, and Chancellor 
King, and multitudes of the most respectable writers in the 
communion of the Episcopal church," says Dr. Coleman,. 
" fully sustain the foregoing representations of the right of 
suffrage, as enjoyed by the primitive churches. They are 

1 Coleman's Primitire Church, p. 50. 2 l\i[^, p. 51. 

3 Ibid. p. 51. 

11 



122 APPENDIX. 

clearly supported by the late Dr. Burton, and by Riddle, 
both of Oxford University, and by the best authorities, both 
ancient and modern. ' The mode of appointing bishops and 
presbyters,' says Riddle, ' has been repeatedly changed. 
Election by the people, for instance, has been discontinued. 
This is, indeed, in the estimation of Episcopalians, a great 
improvement ; but still, as they must allow, it is a change." ^ 
" A volume," says Dr. Coleman, " might be filled with au- 
thorities from the English Church alone, in which both her 
most distinguished prelates and her most eminent scholars 
concede to presbyters a virtual equality with bishops, and 
the right to ordain." 

" The Necessary Erudition of a Christian Man, drawn up 
with great care, approved by both houses of Parliament 
in 1543, and prefaced by an epistle from the king himself, 
declares that ' priests [presbyters] and bishops are, by God's 
law, one and the same ; and that the powers of ordination 
and excommunication belong equally to both. . . . Arch- 
bishop Usher, one of the brightest ornaments of the Epis- 
copal church, on being asked by Charles L, in the Isle of 
Wight, whether he found in antiquity that ^presbyters alone 
did ordain,' answered, ' Yes,' and that he would show his 
majesty more — ' even w^here presbyters alone successively 
ordained bishops.' " ^ 

And yet there is reason to believe, that many in the 
Episcopal church, and not a few even of its clergy, tena- 
ciously cherish the belief that theii's is the church of the 
apostolic age, and that out of it there is no valid ordination, 
and, of course, none who ought to be recognized as minis- 
ters of Christ. " Take any other church," they say, " and 
trace back its history, and you will find its origin somewhere 
this side of the age of the apostles ; but not so with the Epis- 

1 Coleman's Primitire Church, p. 69. 2 j]3i,i_ p_ 193^ 



APPENDIX. 123 

copal churcli, for that is of the same age with Christianity." 
But we have only to deliver over such persons with their too 
limited knowledge to the more intelligent members of their 
own communion. Riddle acknowledges that there has been 
a change, and claims that Episcopacy is a " great improve- 
ment^^ upon the church polity of the apostles! This is 
frank and honest. Presbyterianism and Methodism are 
likewise professedly improvements upon Episcopacy. Meth- 
odism had its origin with John Wesley, in the first half of 
the eighteenth century. Presbyterianism had its origin with 
John Calvin, about the middle of the sixteenth century. 
Modern Episcopacy had its origin only ' a few years earlier 
in the same century, with Henry VIII., who established it 
solely as a means of justifying his crime of divorcing the 
queen, and marrying one of the queen's maids of honor.' It 
is " a fragment broken off from the Papal despotism." Or, 
if Episcopacy be traced back through all the abominations of 
the Roman Catholic Church, it had its origin, according to the 
most accredited historians, sometime in the second century, 
in a slight distinction, then for the first time introduced, 
between a bishop and a presbyter. This new kind of 
a bishop was at first simply the presbyter who presided at 
the board of the presbyters of a single local church. He 
was the president of the presbytery of a single church. 
From this the rise of Episcopacy was very gradual, the 
bishop in subsequent centuries claiming more and more 
authority, and the people surrendering their rights one after 
another, until finally the Pope took the place of the already 
despotic bishop, and the government of the church, which at 
first was a pure democracy, became an absolute despotism. 

"With regard to the Episcopal doctrine of apostolic succes- 
sion, in addition to what was said on pages 33, 34, the 
following remarks of Rev. Albert Barnes are exceedingly 
pertinent ; " Nothing in history can be more hopeless than 



124 APPENDIX. 

the effort to make out the actual spiritual descent of Bishop 
White or Hobart as prelatical bishops in a direct uncon- 
taminated line, from the college of the apostles, or from any 
one of the apostles ; and nothing that assumes to be a grave 
matter is more ridiculous or contemptible than the attempt, 
with a grave face, to exhibit such a demonstration. There 
is not a pecuniary claim of the smallest possible value, or a 
claim of any other kind, that could be defended on that 
ground before a court of quarter-sessions ; — not a title to 
an heir-loom, or to a right of common, or to an acre of land, 
that could be maintained for a moment on such an argument, 
and no sensible man would for a moment regard any pre- 
tended right as of the shghtest value, that did not rest on a 
better foundation. It is a most marvellous thing, that sen- 
sible men persist in asserting their belief in any such ascer- 
tainable pedigree, or in its worth, even if it could be as- 
certained. Where, in all the New Testament, is there the 
slightest hint, that the validity of the ministry depends on 
the fact of such an ascertained descent, or that a ministry 
is invalid where such a pedigree cannot be made out ? If 
the New Testament had asserted this, the assertion would 
now strip all Episcopalians, as well as all others, of any 
right to administer the ordinances of religion, and at once 
degrade the whole of them to the condition of laymen." ^ 



NOTE E. 

Congregationalism is not a monarchy^ like Popery ; 
nor prelacy, like Episcopalianism ; nor an oligarchy, like 
Presbyterianism ; but is democratic or republican in govern- 
ment. 

1 See an article on Exclusivism, by Eev. Albert Barnes, in the 
Presbyterian Quarterly Keview for March and June, 1857. 



APPENDIX. 125 

The friends of centralization in cliurcli government in 
this country are very fond of instituting comparisons be- 
tween their several systems and the form of our civil gov- 
ernment. They thus seek to commend their several church 
organizations to the favorable regard of a liberty-loving 
people. But, to say nothing of Papacy, when Episcopacy 
institutes such a comparison in favor of itself, the most re- 
markable thing about it is the boldness with which it pre- 
sumes upon the ignorance and the credulity of those whom 
it hopes to influence. Episcopacy, even in this country, is 
a spiritual despotism. The laity are only mocked with a 
shadow of power. In the election of a minister, if the 
choice of the parish is agreeable to the bishop, very well ; 
but if not, there is no way for the parish to obtain the min- 
ister of its own choice. The election by the parish amounts 
to a mere nomination to the bishop. The sole privilege of 
the people is to give information. They are entirely de- 
pendent upon the will of the bishop for both the valid elec- 
tion and ordination of their minister. And so of the lay 
deputies in the Episcopal conventions ; so long as they de- 
liberate and vote agreeably to the will of the bishops and 
the clergy, they may think themselves of some importance ; 
but in opposition to that will they can do nothing — abso- 
lutely nothing. Thus the clergy are really elected by the 
bishop. And who elects the bishop ? The clergy of a dio- 
cesan convention choose him, and then nominate him to the 
lay deputies. And to whom is the bishop accountable? 
To the power that elects him ? By no means. To the 
people ? Not at all ; but only to his fellow bishops. Thus 
every thing is in the hands of the bishops. In the general 
convention they alone constitute the upper house, and pos- 
sess " the exclusive right to propose acts for the concurrence 
of the other house," which is composed of clerical and lay 
delegates. Now what possible similarity has this govern- 
11* 



126 APPENDIX. 

ment to that of our republic ? "Wlien the chief magistrates 
of the several states shall be , chosen for life, and shall be 
accountable only to a board of their own number ; when no 
town officers can be chosen except at the option of the offi- 
cial head of the state; when these chief magistrates are 
themselves chosen by the town officers ; when the people 
have no power, of their own sovereign will, either to place 
over themselves their own officers or to depose them ; when, 
in short, the sovereignty in these United States is no longer 
with the people, but exclusively in the hands of their offi- 
cers, then, and then only, may Episcopacy begin to claim 
our favorable regard on the ground of its marked resem- 
blance to our civil government. 

The following remarks, with regard to Episcopacy in this 
country, are too true. " Every thing is in the hands of the 
bishops, who are farthest removed from the laity, and have 
least sympathy with them. The bishops are absolute mas- 
ters of the church. If they held their appointment from 
the laity, and represented their opinions and feelings, and if 
they held their appointment only for a term of years, the 
case would be diffijrent. But the bishops are not, in theory 
or in fact, the representatives of the laity, but their spiritual 
lords and masters." -^ 

Nor can Methodism, any more than Episcopacy, claim 
the advantage of a resemblance to our civil government. 
Methodism, hke Episcopacy and Papacy, is a spiritual des- 
potism. It takes the sovereign power from the many, and 
gives it to the few. Its founder, John TTesley, himself de- 
clared, " We are no repuhlicans.^' "As long as I live, the 
people shall have no share in choosing either stewards or 
leaders among the Methodists^ " Certainly that system," it 
has been forcibly said, " which does not leave even their 

■•• Organic Cliristianitj, byL. A. Sawyer, p. 217. 



APPENDIX. 127 

houses of worship in the hands of the people who erected 
them, — which gives the people no vote in the choice of 
their religious teachers, — which leaves no question of dis- 
cipline, — no important question, — to be finally decided by 
the people, or even hy those in whose appointment the people 
have had any agency, — certainly such a system does not 
recommend itself to us by its republicanism." -^ 

The Presbyterians, likewise, are especially fond of claiming 
that their church polity is eminently republican. It is, they 
say, like our republic, a strictly representative government. 
They affirm that there is a striking resemblance between its 
series of judicatories, on the one hand, and our state and na- 
tional governments, and especially our judiciary system, on 
the other. But this comparison is fallacious. The true 
character of a government is determined not so much by 
the nature of its series of judicatories, as by the relation of 
that series to the people, — not so much by the internal 
working of the superstructure as by the nature of the con- 
tact of that superstructure with those governed. Does the 
government, whatever it is in its officers and its courts, have 
its origin immediately from the people; and is it constantly, 
or, at least, at regular and comparatively brief intervals, 
held accountable to the people for its conduct ? or does it 
have its origin immediately from an oligarchy installed for 
life over the people ? or does it originate from neither ? 
These questions are decisive of the nature of a government. 
A government is despotic in its nature just in proportion as 
it is out of the hands of the people ; and it is democratic or 
republican just in proportion as it is in their hands. We 
must scrutinize Presbyterianism, then, in its relation to the 
local churches, in order to understand its true nature as a 
system of government ; and it is at just that decisive point 

1 Congregational Tracts, No. 1, p. 14. 



128 APPENDIX. 

that its similarity to republicanism entirely fails. In Pres- 
byterianism, the session is the church. TThen our town offi- 
cers shall be chosen for life, and shall hold in their hands 
all the legislative and judicial and executive government of 
the town, subject only to the supervision of certain higher 
judicatories composed of representatives chosen not by the 
towns, but by their several boards of officers ; when, in short, 
our town officers shall become themselves the town, and 
from them shall rise all the rest of the governmental ma- 
chinery, then, and then only, may Presbyterianism begUi to 
claim the favorable regard of the people on the ground of 
its striking resemblance to their civil government. " Pres- 
byterianism," says David Hale, " is not republicanism, nor 
is it in any proper sense a representative government. If 
the government of this nation had been organized by the 
election of a president and senate for life, in whom were 
vested all the powers of the constitution, what would it have 
been called ? Not a representative government, certainly, 
nor a republic in any sense. It could have been called 
nothing but an elective aristocracy.'^ The constitution and 
powers of the church session are such of themselves as to 
make this form of church government a jDerfect oligarchy. 
" Presbyterianism," says a recent writer, " is sometimes 
described and advocated by its friends as a system of church 
republicanism. The elders are considered as representa- 
tives of the churches, and the churches are considered as 
administering their affairs, in all the church coui'ts, on the 
representative principle. But this is an entire mistake. 
There is no 'representation of the church in the church 
courts. All those courts are established over the church, 
and are mdependent of it. . . . 

*' The session is not a representative court, in which the 
elders represent the church. To make it such, the elder- 
ship ought to be appointed annually, or for a term of yeai'S. 



APPENDIX. 129 

It is rather a court of monarclis, or aristarchs, who hold 
their office for life ; a limited monarchy, indeed, as so called 
monarchies in the state usually are ; but a real monarchy, 
nevertheless ; or, more strictly, an aristarchy of rulers 
appointed for life, and ruling on the principle of elective 
aristarchy 

" The half representation, which, in effect, is somewhat 
less than half, often not a fourth, in presbyteries and 
synods, is a representation of the eldership, the aristarchy of 
the churches, not the churches themselves. This is very 
far indeed from being republican representation of the 
membership. 

" General assemblies are representative courts based on 
the presbyteries, in which the ministers and elders of the 
presbyteries are represented equally. The representation, 
therefore, is of essentially the same kind as that of the 
presbyteries. 

" The ministers and elders of the Presbyterian church are 
accountable to presbyteries, subject to an appeal to the 
higher courts, but are not accountable to the membership. 
The government of the Presbyterian churches, therefore, 
is as much a despotism as that of the Methodists, the Episco- 
palians, and the Roman Catholics. 

" It was designed to be an improved system of Episcopacy, 
restricting the bishop to a parish, and the presbyters to the 
exercise of parish jurisdiction, and governing the larger 
districts of the church by courts of bishops, assisted by 
equal numbers of presbyters. The principles of the Pres- 
byterial and Episcopal systems are the same. Neither 
allows the powers of church government to be vested in 
the membership ; neither gives the membership any con- 
trolling influence in determining the form and organization 
of the church, or directing its policy and discipline." ^ 

1 Organic Christianity, by L. A. Sawyer, pp. 247-8-9. 



130 APPENDIX. 

" The objections to it are the same as to all other modifi- 
cations of Episcopacy, and all other despotisms. It is not 
scriptural, it is not the original, divinely appointed plan of 
church organization, which was purely democratic; and, 
secondly, it is not expedient. The democratic plan is safer 
and better. This appears from a critical examination of the 
New Testament on the subject; and it is still further 
illustrated by the history and fruits of Presbyterianism, 
and its condition and tendencies at the present time." ^ 

With regard to the natural political affinities of different 
denominations, history abundantly teaches that the more 
centralized the system of church government which men 
advocate, the more despotic the civil government which 
they prefer. It is a notorious historical fact, that in the 
time of the American Revolution, where the Congrega- 
tional church polity jDrevailed there was the greatest en- 
thusiasm among the people in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and in the formation of a republican government; 
and where other systems of church polity prevailed, there 
was the least enthusiasm. The Episcopalians, as a class, 
were tories. They were determined to continue their 
allegiance to the British crown. The Presbyterians, as a 
class, were far more indifferent to the result than the Con- 
gregationalists. The Congregationalists, as a class, were 
fully resolved to be satisfied with nothing less than a strictly 
independent and republican government. 

The political affinities of these several denominations 
have also been clearly developed in the history of England. 
Episcopacy has always been, in that country, the persistent 
friend and supporter of monarchy, and the natural enemy 
of religious toleration and civil liberty. Hence it came to 
be a motto with the tyrannical James, " no bishop, no king." 
" The friends of liberty," says Dr. Robert Yaughan, speak- 

1 Organic Christianity, by L. A. Sawyer, pp. 251, 252. 



APPENDIX. 131 

ing of the Anglican Churcli, " liaye always had to lay their 
account with her opposition, when endeavoring to expand 
the jDrinciples of freedom. Her concessions in this way 
have always come late, reluctantly, and with a bad grace." 
Macaulay likewise says, that the Church of England, from 
the time of its establishment, " continued to be, for more 
than one hundred and fifty years, the servile handmaid of 
monarchy and the steady enemy of public Hberty." 

■ The Presbyterians, while their church polity is a great 
improvement upon Papacy and Episcopacy, and while they 
have done much in weakening the power of despotism, yet 
never have been such bold and uncompromising advo- 
cates of human freedom and republican government as have 
the Congregationalists. It is a well-known fact, that at the 
time of the Westminster Assembly, the Presbyterians were 
generally royalists and bigotedly conservative, while the 
Independents were thorough republicans, and wished for an 
entire reconstruction of the government after the republican 
model. "The relations of Presbyterianism and Inde- 
pendency in England, during the period of the civil war 
and the ascendency of Cromwell, are remarkable. But for 
Independency, Presbyterianism would have subverted the 
religious liberties of England in favor of an exclusive 
Presbyterian national church establishment. But for Pres- 
byterianism, Independency would have succeeded in ob- 
taining permanent toleration for herself, and for other 
Protestant denominations."-^ It is a very significant his- 
torical fact, that Presbyterianism in England " fell in con- 
sequence of its own active exertions to cast down its 
Congregationalist competitors, and to exalt itself at their 
expense." Yet it is but the natural fruit of this church 
polity, that its adherents were unwilling to tolerate Congre- 

1 Organic Christianity, by L. A. Sawyer, pp. 379-380. 



132 APPENDIX. 

gationalism, and that they united as they did with the 
Episcopalians in a carefully laid plot to crush it. But they 
were caught in their own snare, and overwhelmed. The 
monarch whom they raised to the throne made them the 
first victims of his despotism. We will be thankful for all 
the good which holy men in the Presbyterian church have 
done. But their system of church government is exposed 
to all the objections of every despotic ecclesiastical organ- 
ization. It is unscriptural ; and is particularly unsuitable 
to educate a republican people to appreciate and maintain 
their civil freedom. An oligarchical government in the 
church cannot promote repubHcanism in the state. 



NOTE G. 



The advocates of centralized systems of church govern- 
ment, particularly Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are very 
fond of claiming that theirs are the conservative churches. 
Great stress is laid upon this claim, and it is very effective 
in its influence with great numbers of well-meaning people. 
But the good word conservative, in this case, is made to play 
a very deceptive part, for such have come to be the asso- 
ciations of the term, that people forget, that what is evil 
may be conserved as well as what is good, and therefore 
are not careful to inquire for the particular things of which 
these church organizations claim to be conservative. Should 
this inquiry be made, it will generally be found that the 
claimants prefer to stop with the word conservative, and 
make no specifications. The hoops of a cask will hold the 
most vile and fetid wine as securely as the most pure and 
sparkling ; but it would not be particularly sensible nor 
honest for a seller of the wine to be continually ringing 
changes upon the strength of the hoops, and at the same 



APPENDIX. 133 

time decline to speak of what is within. These centralized 
church organizations assume to be far more conservative 
than Congregationalism. But more conservative of what, 
we ask ? We have a right to the specifications. More con- 
servative of civil and religious liberty ? If so, it is some- 
thing worth mentioning. But where is the man of ordinary 
intelligence who ever thought of making a comparison, in 
this particular, in favor of church centralization ? More con- 
servative, then, of popular education, and of the general in- 
telligence of the people ? Facts and statistics, now known and 
read of all men, would at once unmask the presumption of 
such a claim, if any one should be bold enough to make it. 
More conservative, is it said, then, of the general thrift and 
enterprise, of the material prosperity, of the masses of the 
people ? Let New England, in this regard, be compared 
with any or all of those portions of the world where other 
systems of church government prevail, and would any advo- 
cate of church centralization wish to publish the result? 
More conservative, then, of true piety, of that " mind which 
was in Christ Jesus " ? It would become us to reply to this 
charge with great humility. And yet it is proper to test 
Congregationalism in this respect by the rule of the Saviour, 
" Ye shall know them by their fruits." Let, then, the relig- 
ious character of the Pilgrims, and of those generally who 
have adopted their church polity, answer ; let the history of 
revivals in New England, let the standard of piety in the 
New England churches, their efficiency in the service of 
Christ, the missionary spirit that pervades them, the amount 
of their Christian benevolence, — let these fruits, and such 
as these, answer. But in respect to all these particulars 
now mentioned, vital and all important as they are, no advo- 
cate of a centralized church government ever dares to draw 
any comparison between Congregationalism and his own 
system. For it is too prominently written on the page of 
12 



134 APPENDIX. 

history ever to be denied, that it was Congregationalism 
standing side by side with Presbyterianism and Episcopacy, 
and in spite of their combined resistance, that saved Eng- 
lish liberty at its last gasp, and also that it was this same 
church polity that gave birth to American republicanism. 
It is likewise too well known ever to be denied, that under 
no other form of church government has so much been done, 
and so successfully, for popular education and for the moral 
elevation of the masses of the people. And in respect to 
the last most important particular, a living and efifective 
piety, while we humble ourselves before God, we say, let the 
world judge of the diiFerent church polities by their fruits. 
An eminent Episcopal writer admits, that " the most ultra 
churchman says nothing against the personal piety of [his] 
Protestant brethren." And certainly the Presbyterians wiU 
not be very forward to draw any comparison in this respect 
in their favor, when, in large branches of their church, no 
evidence of regeneration is necessary for admission to the 
church; but, on the contrary, all except the "ignorant" 
and the " scandalous " are cordially received.^ 

More conservative, then, we ask again, of what ? Of 
evangelical truth; of "the faith once delivered to the 
saints " ? This is frequently asserted ; but we have looked 
in vain for any thing that could be called even a proximate 
proof of the truth of such an assertion. Both Episco- 
palians and Presbyterians often point ominously to Mas- 
sachusetts, and each affirm, that, had their church polity 
prevailed here, the Unitarian apostasy never would have 
occurred. This is a standing affirmation ; it has been made 
again and again in private conversation and in the public 
prints. A distinguished American bishop made it a few 
years since on a public occasion in London. But the Epis- 

1 See The Great Awakening, by Joseph Tracy, p. 22-24. 



APPENDIX. 135 

copallans forget that the first church that became Unitarian 
in this country was an Episcopalian church ; ^ and the Pres- 
byterians forget that the church over which the celebrated 
Dr. W. E. Channing was settled was once a Presbyterian 
church,^ the oldest but one of their order in New England. 
The advocates of Episcopacy especially are very injudicious 
in thrusting their church into such a comparison. They 
are too fearfully exposed not to be terribly riddled them- 
selves in turn, if they first cast that stone. It is already 
indelibly written of English Episcopacy on the page of his- 
tory, that she has " a Popish ritual, a Calvinistic creed, and 
an Arminian clergy." Only "two thousand out of her 
twelve thousand ministers," it is said, can be called evan- 
gelical. " By far the largest portion ^ Episcopal ministers 
and members of the Episcopal Church everywhere," says 
Kev. Albert Barnes, " are decided Aminians in doctrine ; 
and wherever Episcopacy propagates itself, it propagates, as 
a matter of course, the doctrines of Arminius." Again he 
says : " It would not be possible to make the whole Epis- 
copal Church conform in doctrine to the obvious meaning of 
the Thirty-nine Articles, and still retain the Episcopal form of 
government." ^ Is it not true that the Episcopalian churches 
of Connecticut are to a great extent Arminian in doctrine ? 
Is it not generally understood, that Episcopacy in that State 
is a very good substitute for Unitarianism ? And yet we 
never hear of the Arminian apostasy in the Episcopal 
Church of Connecticut ! This is accounted for, in part, by 
the fact, that practically such a centralized church has no 
power, without the aid of the State, to discipline its mem- 
bers to any great extent for doctrinal errors, without destroy- 
ing itself The Episcopalians of Connecticut could not, by 

1 King's Chapel, Boston. 

2 Federal Street Church, Boston. 

^ See article on Exclusivism in Presbyterian Quarterly Bevicw for 
March and June, 1857. 



136 APPENDIX. 

any course of discipline, purge themselves of Arminlanism, 
without causing the ruin of the entire fixbric of their church. 
When error has thus obtained a foothold in a consolidated 
church, it is impossible for that church to conform to the 
apostolic rule, ^^Jirst pure, then peaceable;" it can be peace- 
able only as it connives at and conceals its impurity. On 
account of the gradual and unobstructed course of error 
in such churches, but little commotion is made ; and this, to 
an alarming extent, is the real conservatism of church cen- 
tralization. It is the conservation of peace at the expense 
of purity. It is such conservatism as Luther had to con- 
tend with, and such as has always been one of the greatest 
foes to all real reformation and spiritual advancement. It 
is the conservatism o£ a church that needs above all things, 
and at any expense of commotion or revolution, the most 
radical reformation. It is the obvious teaching of ecclesias- 
tical history, that centralization in church government is far 
less strenuous in its opposition to the insidious advances of 
sin and error than it is in its opposition to true reform. 
"It seems to be admitted," says Dr. Coleman, "by members 
of their own communion, that there is no discipline in the 
Episcopal Church." One of the English Episcopalian 
writers, whom he cites in proof of this statement, affirms, 
" I believe such a thing as any single presentation for notori- 
ously immoral conduct has scarcely been heard of for a 
century." " A well-known clergyman of our own country. 
in assigning his ' reasons for preferring Episcopacy,' speaks 
of it as ' universally felt and admitted ' that ' in no Christian 
denomination of the country is there so great a diversity of 
opinion [as in the Episcopal Church] about doctrine, church 
polity, etc. But we hear,' he adds, 'of no discipline on 
account of this diversity. The probability is, that discipline 
on these accounts would rend and break up the church.' 
And again he says : ' There is no church in the world that 
has in fact so great a diversity of opinion in her o^vn 



APPENDIX. 137 

bosom, as the Church of England, and not a little of down- 
right infidelity.' " ^ And this, recollect, is the language of 
one who is giving his " Reasons for preferring Episcopacy." 
One reason is, that he will not be disciplined in that church 
for any opinions he may chance to cherish; no, not even if 
he becomes an infidel. Under this neglect of discipline for 
opinion, the Church of England, he thinks, " will recover 
the primitive vitality of Christianity, so as to have it per- 
vadinoj and animatino; her whole communion." " Nor is it 
less certain," he adds, " that by attempting discipline for 
opinions, she would forever blight all these prospects." 
And yet this is the church which boasts of being more con- 
servative of " the faith once dehvered to the saints " than is 
Congregationalism, and which claims that it would have 
saved New England from Unitarianism ! 

Is it not, moreover, a well-known fact, that the more 
rigorous discipline of other denominations has sent multi- 
tudes, whose Christian characters were such that they felt 
themselves in danger from that discipline, into the Episcopal 
Church for safety ? Is it not true, that in New England the 
temperance reformation, and the strong protest of the Con- 
gregational churches against the sin of human oppression, 
have sent numbers into the bosom of Episcopacy to find 
quiet and peace ! Well may Dr. Coleman significantly ask : 
" Why do the male contents of other denominations, men of 
equivocal character if not of tarnished reputation, take 
refuge in such numbers in that church ? " And yet this is 
the church polity whose advocates proclaim in high places 
that it would have saved Massachusetts from the Unitarian 
apostasy ! 

And then, again, how dare the Presbyterians continually 
ring changes, as they do, upon this same Unitarian defec- 

1 See Primitive Chmxh, by Dr. L. Coleman, pp. 121, 122. 

i2* 



138 APPENDIX. 

tion, to the disparagement of Congregationalism, and in favor 
of their own church poHty ? Is their ecclesiastical system 
so immaculate, as far as the sin of heresy is concerned, that 
they can afford to exult in this regard over the church 
polity of the Pilgrims ? 

There were in Massachusetts in 1854, fifteen hundred and 
twenty-one churches. Of these about one third were Trin- 
itarian Congregational churches, while only one hundred and 
seventy-two were Unitarian. Nearly all the Unitarianism of 
New England, and indeed of this country, is confined to 
the State of Massachusetts, so that a comparison of the 
whole number of the churches of this order in the land, 
some two hundred and fifty, with the whole number of 
Trinitarian Congregational churches, probably nearly three 
thousand, renders this Unitarian defection still more incon- 
siderable. 

Now, first, we ask. Is there no parallel to this in the his- 
tory of Presbyterianism ? Has Presbyterianism saved the 
Presbyterian Church of Switzerland from Arianism and 
Unitarianism ? Good authority afiirms that the church of 
the land of Calvin " has greatly declined from its adherence 
to the Calvinistic doctrines, and has not only gone over to 
Arianism, but has gone far beyond, to Unitarianism and 
humanitarianism." Has the Presbyterianism of England 
saved the churches of this order there from a similar apos- 
tasy ? It is a well-known fact, that nearly all the English 
Presbyterian churches are Unitarian. Has the Presbyte- 
rianism of this country been proof against all heresy ? Is 
there no Arminianism among the Old School Presbyterians ? 
A distinguished divine and scholar of New England, a 
man not given to fault-finding, still less to heresy-hunting, 
the late Professor B. B. Edwards, while on a tour at the 
South, wrote, " I have heard more Arminianism since I 
have been here than I ever heard before in my life." And 
then how is it with the Cumberland Presbyterians ? Did 



APPENDIX. 139 

their diurcli government save tliem from becoming profess- 
edly Arminian? In 1837, did Presbyterianism save the 
Presbyterian Church of the United States from the so-called 
heresies of New Schoolism ? Did it prevent the so-called 
apostasy of nearly one half of the churches of that commun- 
ion ? It does not seem that Presbyterianism has any great 
reason to exult so much over the fact, that out of the fifteen 
hundred and twenty-one churches of the State of Massachu- 
setts, one hundred and seventy-two are Unitarian. 

But, secondly, we affirm that there is abundant reason to 
warrant the belief, that, had ail the churches of Massachu- 
setts been bound together by some one of the consolidating 
systems of church government, the whole body would have 
sunk irrecoverably into Unitarianism. Not even a remnant 
of the churches could have disentangled themselves from 
the falling mass, and maintained in its integrity the faith of 
the Pilgrims. For when a doctrinal error has once ob- 
tained a lodgement in a consolidated church, — and history 
shows that this is as easily accomplished in such a church 
as in any other, — one of two things more usually happens, 
either the church is rent in twain, or the whole body lapses 
into the error ; and in either result the system of church 
government proves worse than nothing as a protection 
against heresy, for in both cases it serves greatly to extend 
and perpetuate the evil of the error. Not even the Church 
of Scotland has been able to maintain its integrity, and at 
the same time protect itself against so-called erroneous opin- 
ions ; but in the violent discussion of certain constitutional 
questions, — questions of church and state, — questions, too, 
involving more or less the doctrine of the church, it has 
been broken into fragments ; and hence we have what Rev. 
Albert Barnes so appropriately calls the " asteroidal frag- 
ments of the Scotch Church." On the other hand, in the 
English Church, sunk as it is into Arminianism and irrelig- 
ion, we have an example of an entire body of consolidated 



140 APPENDIX. 

churches lapsing, in spite of their creed, quietly and irre- 
coverably into religious error. We also have an example 
similar to this last in the case of the Old School Presbyte- 
rians in our own country, where the whole body of connected 
churches, in spite of their recorded professions, and in the 
face of the outraged moral sentiment and the earnest prot- 
estations of the Christian world, have virtually and practi- 
cally committed themselves to the defence of American 
slavery. It would not be possible for the English Episco- 
pal Church to bring the real doctrinal faith of the mass of 
its members up to their written creed, without a revolution 
that would prove the utter destruction of their church 
establishment. Nor would it be possible to bring the real 
faith of the Old School Presbyterian Church of this country 
up to their written creed upon the subject of slavery, with- 
out bringing on the dismemberment and utter ruin of that 
church. In no other way does a centralized system of 
church government exhibit so much power as in preventing 
reformation in the church, when once it has fallen into sin 
or error. Could Luther, with all the power of the Reforma- 
tion, reform the Catholic Church ? Could the Puritans re- 
form the English Church ? No more can the older branch 
of the Presbyterian Church in this country be reformed, 
when once it shall have fully prostituted itself to the defence 
of the divine right of American slavery. And thus, too, the 
Evangelical Churches of Massachusetts would have been 
irretrievably lost in the Unitarian apostasy had they all 
been helplessly bound together by some consohdating sys- 
tem of church government. Instead of the elastic and 
comparatively easy bound, with which evangelical religion, 
under the Congregational system, regained its position, it 
would have been held down by all the concentrated power 
of a great provincial or national ecclesiastical organization, 
and its return to its former position would have been ren- 
dered impossible except by a most violent and disastrous 



APPEKDIX. 141 

revolution, sucli probably as could never have been success- 
fully carried through. But as it was, at the commencement 
of the Unitarian controversy in 1810, there were, in all, 
three hundred and sixty-one Congregational churches, and 
at the close of the controversy, or rather the more bellig- 
erent form of it, in 1840, there were four hundred and nine 
orthodox Congregational churches. 

Where, then, is the evidence that these centralized sys- 
tems of church government are more conservative of evan- 
gelical truth than is Congregationalism ? It cannot be found 
either in the nature of these systems or in their history. 
On the contrary, the great mass of evidence, drawn from all 
sources upon this point, is most decidedly against them. 
" It is notorious, that when false doctrine has inundated the 
church, it has flowed in from the clergy, and not from the 
people ; and when the people have been trusted with power 
commensurate with their spiritual culture, they have stimu- 
lated their pastors to a maintenance of the simple truth. 
Our ecclesiastical system educates the people for their 
responsibilities and hy their responsibilities ; it honors them 
in training them, and in the purpose for which they are 
trained. It thus gives them a conservative influence, and 
prompts the clergy to respect that influence. Accordingly, 
we find that an immense majority of the churches standing 
on the republican platform have retained the evangelical 
faith ; while the larger part of those which have been ruled 
by a hierarchy have lapsed into error. A small faction of 
the Church of England, with its Calvinistic creed and its 
skilful apparatus for enforcing it, is designated by the 
epithet Evangelical; while the Congregationalists of Eng- 
land, with all their aversion to oecumenical symbols, are a 
model of unity in the evangelical belief. If the pastors 
were to abandon their faith, the people would stand fast 
upon it. It has been often objected, that among the fifteen 
hundred and twenty-one churches in the State of Massa- 



142 APPENDIX. 

chusetts, one hundred and seventy-two are Unitarian. Still, 
Unitarianism has not flourished so vigorously in this Puritan 
Commonwealth as Deism has flourished under a more con- 
centrated church government ; not so extensively as, in the 
opinion of wise observers, it would have prevailed under any 
other than our free polity ; for if the churches of Massachu- 
setts had been amalgamated into one state confederation, it 
is supposed that nearly all of them would have gone where 
the few dominant spirits had led the way ; and the Congre- 
gationalism of that venerable Commonwealth would prob- 
ably have been — what the Presbyterianism of England 
now is — penetrated with Socinianism. The gracefulness of 
Buckminster, the amenity of Greenwood, the sober sense of 
Ware, the wit of Kirkland, the genius of Channing, the 
strength of Theophilus Parsons, himself a host, the fame of 
the University, the princely fortunes of the metropolis, would 
have carried the churches headlong, unless every church 
had been trained to stand on its own foothold, and feel its 
responsibility to God, rather than to the dignitaries of the 
state. The life of the churches in Massachusetts after the 
eruption of Unitarianism, when contrasted with the death- 
like torpor of the Prussian churches after the eruption of 
rationalism, affords an indisputable argument for the policy 
which trusts the conservation of the truth to a free people. 
It is a noteworthy fact, that those churches of New England 
whose Congregationalism was the most unshackled, remained 
the firmest against the Unitarian onset, TThile ecclesiastics 
who had a centralized government were oscillating or yield- 
ing, the Baptists, who stretched Congregationalism into In- 
dependency, stood erect in the faith. The late Professor 
Edwards, a divine eminent ahke for his candor and accu- 
racy, remarked, at the close of an extensive tour : ' Through- 
out all my travels in Europe, and in the Southern States 
of our own country, I have never heard the doctrines of total 
depravity, regeneration, atonement, sovereignty, decrees, 



APPENDIX. 143 

and eternal punishment proclaimed in so pungent and un- 
compromising a style as I have ordinarily heard them among 
the Congregationalists of our jSTorth-Eastern States.' " ^ 

Of what, then, are these centralized systems of church 
government more conservative than is Congregationalism? 
It is certainly true, that they are less conservative of evan- 
gehcal truth, a living piety, and the active benevolence and 
general efficiency of Christians. If, now, there are any 
minor things worthy to be mentioned, of which they are 
more conservative, it belongs to those who affirm it to make 
the specifications and prove their assertion. We know of no 
proper end or influence of a church which is not best attained 
and conserved by the church polity of the Pilgrims and the 
primitive Christians. Let the people thoroughly inform 
themselves upon this subject, and be no longer deceived by 
an artful use of the popular term conservative. It is the 
true conservatism of Congregationalists to maintain in all its 
integrity the church polity of the apostles and first Chris- 
tians. "The true conservatism of New England is to 
keep a fast hold of those principles which are inwrought 
into the very warp and woof of our political system ; and 
where is radicalism, if not in attempting to eradicate the 
ecclesiastical polity which, for more than two hundred years, 
has been growing with our growth, and intertwining itself 
with the character of our people ? Where is the disorgan- 
izing spirit and the far-famed sin of schism, if not in at- 
tempting to extirpate the usages of our Pilgrim fothers, 
men who were as well qualified by nature, as well fitted by 
intellectual and moral discipline, to lay the foundations of 
an apostolical church, as uninspired men ever were, or 
perhaps can be expected ever to be ? The citizens of some 
States follow in the footsteps of their fathers from the mere 

1 Address before the American Congregational Union, by Prof. 
E. A. Park, D. D., pp. 38-40. 



144 APPENDIX. 

influence of veneration for the past. We should gather 
around the rehgious institutions of our Puritan ancestry, 
because they are in the spirit of the New Testament ; 
because they are the most venerable of all our institutions i 
because they are homogeneous with our national character ; 
because, when they fall, one prop of our civil liberties will 
fall with them." ^ 

TTe close this Appendix with the remark, that while we 
have thus frankly expressed our convictions upon the 
subject of church polity, we are not insensible to the dis- 
tinction between the essence of Christianity and any ex- 
ternal form in which it may be conserved and propagated. 
True piety, in this world, is often cherished under the 
greatest external disadvantages ; and, therefore, not un- 
frequently, especially in isolated cases, it is found flourish- 
ing under a most unfavorable church polity. According to 
the example and spmt of the Saviour, we are to love all our 
fellow men as endowed with immortal being, and capable 
of immortal happiness ; but we cannot do this unless at the 
same time, and with an equal intensity, we hate their sins. 
It is the fine remark of Olshauseu, that '• the blaze of God's 
wrath is only one side of the flame of his love." TTe are 
to hate sin even if we should find it in an angel, and all the 
more because it is in an angel. So, on a similar principle, 
we extend the hand of cordial Christian fellowship to all 
who truly love our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and who 
hope for salvation only by faith in him as their Almighty 
Redeemer; and at the same time we most strenuously 
protest against any unscriptural church polity which any of 
these brethren in Christ may have adopted. 

1 Sermon on the Duties of the New England Clergy, by Prof. 
E. A. Park, D. D., pp. 16, 17. 



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